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Mercia (AIM: MERC), which is focused on the creation, funding and scaling of innovative technology businesses with high growth potential from the UK regions, is pleased to announce that it has agreed the Group’s second direct investment from the portfolio of investments managed by Enterprise Ventures Group (“EVG”) following its acquisition by Mercia on 9 March 2016. The syndicate investment into sureCore Limited (“sureCore”), a low power electronic memory design specialist, provides further confirmation of the strategic benefit EVG brings to Mercia, expanding Mercia’s direct investment pipeline sourced via its third party funds significantly. This follows the investment in Concepta Diagnostics completed in May, the first by the Group in an EVG portfolio company.
Mercia led the Series B seven figure investment round alongside existing investors Finance Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund and Capital-E. EVG had previously invested £1,020,000 seed and early stage finance via its Finance Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund.
Based in Sheffield and led by a team of industry experts with over 30 years of experience, sureCore develops and licenses low power embedded memory designs for the semiconductor industry. It has successfully exploited growing market demand for more memory and lower power consumption in leading edge devices, such as those serving the Internet of Thing (“IoT”) and networking spaces.
Memory designs developed by sureCore have shown an up to 80% saving in dynamic power consumption and up to 75% reduction in static power, compared to industry standard embedded memory. The Mercia Board believes sureCore’s technology has the potential to disrupt many high-worth technology markets, including wearables, networking infrastructure and the IoT.
Dr Mark Volanthen, Investment Director and Head of Electronics, Materials & Manufacturing / Engineering at Mercia said:
“The investment into sureCore further reinforces the strategic rationale behind Mercia’s acquisition of EVG. Mercia now has access to an increased pipeline of potential emerging stars, and sureCore is testament to the high calibre of businesses that EVG has supported via its third party funds. We believe sureCore is an exciting company that has the ability to help Mercia deliver shareholder value as its technology is adopted across high-worth markets.”
Investment Director Ashwin Kumaraswamy, who managed the investment via EVG’s Finance Yorkshire Seedcorn Fund, said:
“We are delighted to have this opportunity to further support sureCore. As an early stage investor, we have seen the company grow to the stage where it is now delivering on its vision of redefining ultra-low power memory and solving existing industry challenges, thus lowering costs for manufacturers and increasing performance for end-users.”
Paul Wells, CEO of sureCore, said:
“This is a tremendous vote of confidence in our technology and our ability to deliver ultra low power memory designs for the next generation of smart and IoT devices whose power consumption must be minimal.”
Mercia Technologies PLC
Mercia is a national investment group focused on the creation, funding and scaling of innovative businesses with high growth potential from the UK regions. Mercia benefits from 18 university partnerships and six offices across the Midlands, the North of Englandand Scotland, providing it with access to high quality, regional deal flow. Mercia is quoted on AIM with the epic “MERC”.
Mercia’s “complete capital solution” investment model initially nurtures businesses via its third party funds under management (expanded to circa £220 million following its acquisition of Enterprise Ventures Group) and then over time Mercia can provide further funding to its emerging stars thanks to its ability to deploy direct investment follow-on capital from its own balance sheet.
In a recent report (Source: Beauhurst, The Deal, 2015/16), Mercia was found to be the fifth most active investor in the UK and the fourth most active in technology. Since its IPO in December 2014, the Company has invested over £20 million directly across its portfolio of emerging stars and continues to seek both early stage third party investment opportunities as well as providing its emerging stars with the required capital and management support to build towards exits that will realise incremental value for Mercia shareholders.
sureCore
sureCore Limited is an ultra-low power memory design company based in Sheffield, UK, developing low power memories for current and next generation, silicon process technologies. Its award-winning, world-leading, low power memory designs are process independent and variability tolerant, making them suitable for a wide range of technology nodes. sureCore’s memory designs help SoC developers meet both challenging power budgets and manufacturability constraints posed by leading edge process nodes. |
