Partnership spin-off advances RF-iT Solutions
PONTIS Venture Partners and Truffle Venture invested in RF-iT Solutions, a Spin-off from the semiconductor group Infineon. The financing round will serve to advance the international expansion of RF-iT´s You-R OPEN OPerating ENvironment which is a leading RFID platform for system integrators.
PONTIS Venture Partners structured this first financing round, in which RF-iT Solutions received equity financing from PVP I, advised by PONTIS Venture Partners as well as from Paris based spin-off specialist Truffle Venture. Public leverage from the federal agency Austria Wirtschaftsservice (AWS) complemented the round with a guarantee under the TFP program and a seed financing grant. In total RF-iT Solutions will receive 4 Million. Euro in this first financing round. RF-iT Solutions was founded in July 2005 and will take over all activities related to RFID system solutions from Infineon, including the You-R OPEN software, which Infineon developed to market readiness, as well as readers and service components.
The company will continue to develop its range of services and You-R OPEN. The You-R OPEN Operating ENvironment connects a company’s existing logistics IT landscape to its new RFID supported logistics system and its entire RFID infrastructure of readers, PCs and links to IT networks. In addition, RF-iT Solutions will continue to operate the RFID Solution Excellence Center in Graz. The center acts as a showcase for different RFID applications, a development laboratory for sector-specific RFID solutions, a verification laboratory to carry out technology research and a customer training center.
“It is our objective to establish the You-R OPEN RFID operating environment as a de facto standard in the marketplace. This will allow system integrators to offer their customers end-to-end RFID system solutions. Our core technology and Consulting competence, built up over many years, in matters relating to radio frequency interface, information technology and RFID-relevant process management in logistics, facilitates the handling of RFID technology,” explains Dominik Berger, founder and Managing Director of RF-iT Solutions.
“The approach chosen by RF-iT Solutions allows IT and software companies and system integrators without RFID expertise to participate quickly in the booming RFID market, because You-R OPEN enables them to benefit from efficient RFID system integration, easy scalability, and simple maintenance.”
“Despite very harsh and challenging market conditions in the financing of early-stage companies, we managed the timely closing of the A-round. We are very pleased with this success, which is a significant milestone in the development of RF-it Solutions.“ comments founder and CTO Alex Gauby Thomas Moser, Partner at PONTIS. Our investment decision was driven by RF-iT Solutions’ strong technology base and the profound industry expertise and international network of the founders. We strongly believe in a highly dynamic development in the RFID business in the next years” Jean-Francois Fourt, Managing Partner at Truffle Venture:
”We at Truffle greatly believe in RF-iT´s expertise on its market, a market, which is going to develop rapidly over the next few years. We also think that the management team is well armed to pilot RF-iT in the near future which is crucial to its success.”
“We are delighted that RF-iT Solutions continues to develop Infineons former RFID Software and Solutions business, its outstanding product portfolio and innovative business model will accelerate market dynamics significantly.” says Monika Kircher-Kohl, CFO Infineon Technologies AG Austria.