Start-up company Verisity has raised $13 million in a private placement. Investors include California-based LSI Logic,($2 million), the Sequoia fund, the Gemini fund, the Advent fund, Zohar Zisappel and Stanford University. This is the company’s third private placement. The company refused to give details of the value at which the placement was made.
The $300,000 seed-stage capital raising exercise was carried out in February 1996 by RAD group president Zohar Zisappel and the Eurofund fund (invested by the Federman family, Daimler-Benz and other German entities). The company first raised capital in November 1996, attracting $2.4 million from funds (Gemini, Eurofund, Advent), and from Zisappel, Dr. Ed Malavsky (president of Gemini, who invested privately), Yossi Sela and others. The second Verisity placement took place in August 1997, raising $2.63 million invested by the Sequoia fund of the US (its first investment outside the United States), Stanford University and private investors.
Verisity is a leading company in functional verification of system chips. Verisity develops and markets software tools that enable engineers who design chips and electronic systems to verify these products,
tracking errors at the design stage. The product
the company developed, Specman Elite, enables previously manual tasks in the verification process to be automated. Use of the product shortens verification schedules by up to two-thirds, which, in turn, shortens the overall development process by months.
Verisity, with a payroll of 90 employees, was set up in 1996 by Yoav Hollander and Avishai Silvershatz. Its R&D centre is located in Rosh Ha’ayin, while it has its marketing and sales centre in Silicon Valley.
Published by Israel's Business Arena March 10, 1999