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November 3, 2004
ATA Ventures Completes $150 Million First Fund,
ATA Ventures I, L.P.
Emerging Firm to Use "a team approach" towards
Early Stage Investment Opportunities
Redwood City, Calif., November 3, 2004 - ATA Ventures, a Redwood City venture capital firm focusing on early-stage information technology investments, today announced that it has formed ATA Ventures I, L.P., a new equity fund capitalized with $150 million. With the creation of this fund, ATA Ventures enters the investment market as an emerging firm, but with over 50 years of collective start-up experience shared between its three founding Managing Directors. The new fund will be invested in Information Technology (IT) companies that utilize new "integrated solutions" to harbor and leverage core Intellectual Property (IP). Integrated solutions include semiconductors, nano-technologies, integrated optics, and emerging software techniques to provide more sophisticated forms of information processing at reduced costs. End products provided by these companies will range from components through complete systems and equipment, and anticipated customers of ATA Ventures' portfolio companies will be in the growing enterprise, cable, wireline, wireless, and consumer markets. Several investments have already been made including the firm's lead investments in Neophotonics, Cswitch, Synfora, SPANSlogic, and Nanogram.
ATA Ventures I, L.P. will be managed by three investment professionals: Michio Fujimura, Hatch Graham, and T. Peter Thomas. The varying range of backgrounds of the investment professionals creates a diverse blend of expertise -- the firm intends to combine these backgrounds to make "team" decisions based on unique perspectives. Mr. Fujimura has over 35 years experience in IT related fields, with his past 15 years managing a venture consultant firm supporting over 40 start-ups. Mr. Graham is an accomplished technologist with several key patents in the fields of cable modems, wireless technology, satellite communications, and other signal processing applications. In addition, Graham has been a founder and executive in a number of successful start-ups and public companies. Mr. Thomas brings over 20 years of venture capital related experience, including 18 years as general partner of the highly successful venture firm, Institutional Venture Partners. Prior to his venture experience, Mr. Thomas held key management and principal roles at Intel, Sylvania, and Fairchild.
Limited Partners investing in ATA Ventures I, L.P. include a variety of well-recognized foundations, endowments, pension funds, and fund of fund organizations located domestically and abroad. "The diverse backgrounds of the partners at ATA Ventures compliment each other nicely and should support the fund well as they carry out their 'team approach' strategy to investing," stated Kelly Meldrum, Director of Private Equity at the Hewlett Foundation.
About ATA Ventures - Founded in 2004, ATA Ventures ("a team approach") is an emerging venture capital firm focused on seeking out early stage private companies, which appear to offer above-average prospects for capital growth. ATA Ventures will focus on Information Technology (IT), and intends to provide seed capital and early stages of financing to these companies.
For more detailed information:
visit us on the web at www.ataventures.com.
Contact:
Hatch Graham, ATA Ventures
650-622-3535
hgraham@ataventures.com
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