Silicon Valley RFID company, Savi, sells for $400 million
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Who says RFID isn’t hot?
RFID stands for radio frequency identification, and it is supposed to be all the rage in retail. RFID tags emit low-power radio waves, so that RFID readers can track the movement of tagged objects — be it in retail, military or for security reasons.
We mentioned earlier that Alien, an RFID company of Morgan Hill just south of Silicon Valley, filed a “scary” IPO prospectus — showing no profits and lots of other risks.
But now Savi Technology, of Sunnyvale, has just been sold to defense contractor Lockheed Martin for around $400 million, according to a well-placed source. Here’s the Mercury News story.
Vector Capital, a San Francisco buyout firm which is the largest shareholder in Savi, is on a roll. It is the third deal worth about $400 million for the firm in just the last week. (Update: Zoli below suggests a sale of $400M may not be that big, considering Savi was valued in a private round for more than $400M just a year or so ago. Good point, and perhaps sign RFID may not be all that hot afterall. However, Vector invested in Savi early, starting at a valuation $200M or lower, according to our source, and so probably did ok.)
It is relatively unusual for defense contractors like Lockheed to buy Silicon Valley companies.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
