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CamSemi CEO, David Baillie

Written by Ben Fountain

Tuesday, 23 October 2007

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CamSemi CEO, David Baillie
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Fresh from his success in helping to raise $26m for Green semiconductor outfit, CamSemi, David Baillie fields this week's ten questions.

The company

CamSemi CEO, David Baillie

Cambridge-based CamSemi has recently introduced a new family of semiconductor chips to help manufacturers develop low cost, more energy-efficient power supplies for the ‘booming’ consumer electronics industry.

The company is committed to enabling cost-efficient power conversion and has recently secured $26 million in VC funding on the back of its unique first products and development pipeline.

01.What are the factors, in your view, that helped CamSemi raise one of the largest VC funding rounds for a European fabless semiconductor company in 2007?

It is a combination of the scale of our target markets, our technical and commercial progress to date, our proprietary technologies, our management and engineering teams and our existing and future product portfolios.

Our ICs address a huge global market undergoing deep change. The consumer electronics industry is facing mounting consumer, regulatory and environmental pressures to introduce more energy-efficient power supplies and battery chargers. CamSemi’s approach is unique: we can enable more efficient power conversion but at low cost and with simpler circuits. Other solutions are available but they come at a cost premium.

02.Are you able to give us a sneak peek at your product roadmap going forward?

We work in fiercely competitive markets so cannot disclose too much at this stage. Our first products – the C2470 family – are stand-alone controllers offering market-leading power conversion efficiencies and low no-load consumption. One of our next developments is to integrate our sophisticated control technology with CamSemi’s patented approach for high voltage power ICs to deliver even greater cost and performance benefits.

03.Is there a killer application for your technology?

An average 9 W linear power supply weighs a massive 450 g, wastes 50% of the energy drawn from the mains as heat and has a standby power consumption of 1 W. CamSemi’s mini adapter equivalent, based around our C2470 chip, is just 45 g, wastes less than 20% energy and has ten times lower no-load consumption at 100 mW. Our solution is perfect for the linear replacement market: it not only beats the newly emerging worldwide standard for efficiency and no-load power but it costs less than a linear to manufacture too!

04.Your management team has been highlighted as one of your principal strengths. Is there any further expertise you need to bring on board?

CamSemi is growing very rapidly and experiencing a surge in demand for our first products. As a result we plan to create up to 20 new positions across our Cambridge and Taiwan offices in the next six to 12 months and are particularly looking to expand our SMPS design and applications engineering teams to help major customers optimise their designs for manufacture.

05.What would you highlight as your main achievements since taking up your post at CamSemi in 2004?

As a management group, we have been very successful in assembling world-class power engineering, operations, quality management and sales and marketing teams. Although we have grown considerably and have global ambitions we have also managed to maintain the motivation, enthusiasm, rapid decision making and easy communication channels that have been fundamental in driving our progress to date.

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