Elliptic Semiconductor Inc. announced
2 weeks ago that the company has appointed Richard White as their
new Chief Executive Officer.
In addition, the company also announced
that it has secured $2M in investment capital from its existing
investors Venture Coaches, Axis Capital Corporation and prominent
angels and the Business Development Bank of Canada.
Mr. White takes over the responsibilities
from Gord Harling who co-founded the company. Mr. Harling continues
to serve the company as Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Commenting on his appointment, Mr. White
said that he was attracted to Elliptic because of the company's
products, customer traction and the team. "I view Elliptic’s
semiconductor-based security cores and protocol accelerator IP,
in particular those related to wireless and digital rights management,
as addressing significant high growth markets. A few of these
IP products are now shipping in volume and this early customer
validation really highlighted for me the strength of the products
and the team’s ability to execute."
Tim April of the Business Development
Bank of Canada (BDC) noted that the funds will be for new development
and to expand Elliptic's sales and marketing efforts. "Like
Richard, we are impressed with the technology and the team at
Elliptic. They have a compelling embedded solution with proven
traction at a cross section of global customers".
As a former CEO of Solidum and Accelerix,
Mr. White brings to Elliptic more than 25 years of experience
in technology companies building and managing high performance
teams. Through his consulting company he has also provided contract
CEO support services to several other semiconductor companies.
Mr. White began his career as a semiconductor engineer at Mitel.
He has also worked at NovAtel and Extreme Packet Devices in senior
management roles. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering
from Carleton University and an executive MBA from Harvard.
Headquartered in Ottawa, Elliptic Semiconductor
Inc provides semiconductor intellectual products (SIP) for secure
communications ranging from low power TCP/IP implementations with
associated IPsec and SSL security through ultra-high speed link
security solutions at multiple Gigabit per second throughput rates.
All designs consist of comprehensive reference implementations
including semiconductor IP blocks, software drivers and APIs and
supporting software designed to speed time to market and offer
complete, proven interoperability to customers.