Semiconductor startup Avalanche closes $11.5M funding round

A startup is hard at work making a new type of high-speed memory that stores data even when the power is turned off. Avalanche Technology, a company focused on Spin Programmable Memory (SPMEM) non-volatile memory class storage solutions (not pictured), has raised $11.5 million in a new round of funding.

This is the semiconductor startup’s third round of institutional funding.

Previous investors Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Thomvest Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, and Leader Ventures all participated in the round, which was led by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital.

“This round of funding will enable Avalanche to deliver on the promises of magnetic random access memory,” said Avalanche co-founder and CEO said Petro Estakhri in a release today.

Explaining the significance of the funding, Estakhri continued, “Avalanche is moving quickly toward delivering this groundbreaking technology ideally suited for high-volume embedded as well as stand-alone applications targeting markets with a global [total addressable market] well above $30 billion.”

Longtime board member and Mezzanine Capital Partners managing director Will Stewart also said in a release, “Avalanche’s products will blur the gap between memory and storage, cost-effectively enabling radical changes in system architectures and performance across a number of major market segments… I have tremendous confidence in their ability to execute.”

Avalanche was founded in 2006 and is based in Fremont, California — just across San Francisco Bay from Silicon Valley.

The startup took a $7.5 million round of funding in February 2010; participants in that round included Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Thomvest Ventures.

SPMEM, the memory technology Avalanche is currently working on, is well suited, the company claims, to a gamut of applications across telecommunications, computing, mobile, and networking verticals. SPMEM uses Avalanche’s proprietary “spin current and voltage switching technology allowing for lower write current, smaller cell size, and excellent scalability to future technology nodes beyond 10nm,” the company says.

“It is the only true scalable new memory technology providing non-volatility, scalability, low power dissipation, unlimited-write-endurance, high-density, and high performance,” Avalanche says. “It is particularly well suited to applications requiring high data reliability and high performance and has the unique potential of becoming the next generation of universal embedded memory technology for SOC as well as stand-alone devices in a number of high availability storage and mobile applications.”

Additionally, Avalanche says its SPMEM technology requires fewer manufacturing steps than do competing technologies and integrates easily with standard CMOS processes found in wafer foundries globally.