UT Horizon Fund has returned for a $7m series A for GenXComm, having also contributed to a $1.5m seed round in June this year.
GenXComm, a US-based communications technology spinout from University of Texas (UT) at Austin, raised $7m in a series A round yesterday that featured the university system’s investment arm UT Horizon Fund.
Intel Capital, the corporate venturing division of semiconductor producer Intel, led the round, which also included WS Investment, the corporate venture capital fund of law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
VC firms Azure Capital Partners and Bandgap Ventures, incubator Capital Factory, private equity firm Fam Capital Partners and Lip-Bu Tan, president and chief executive of electronic design automation software developer Cadence Design Systems, also took part.
The $7m figure represents a first tranche, with additional capital potentially being raised from new investors. The spinout is targeting a final close of $8m, according to a securities filing.
Founded in 2016, GenXComm has developed simultaneous self-interference cancellation technology, which can double the efficiency of the available wireless spectrum and boost network performance up to thirtyfold in dense environments.
The technology has applications for a range of telecoms services, including wifi, 5G, the internet of things and Docsis, which enables broadband services over existing cable TV infrastructure.
GenXComm is exploiting research by Hardik Jain, a PhD candidate in electrical, electronics and communications engineering, who co-founded the spinout with Sriram Vishwanath, a professor in UT Austin’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The funding will allow the spinout to hire additional research and development staff.
Fam Capital Partners previously led a $1.5m seed round in June 2017 that included the UT Horizon Fund and other, undisclosed investors.
