Cavendish Kinetics raises $36 million, transforms LTE Smartphones

Strategic investment expands successful RF MEMS product line to solve key radio performance bottlenecks in coming LTE devices

SAN JOSE, Calif. – August 24, 2015: Building on the market success of its high performance RF MEMS antenna tuners, Cavendish Kinetics announced today, that it has completed its final funding round with a strategic raise of $36 million, to accelerate the development of its next generation RF components. Cavendish’s new generation of RF components fully leverages its proven RF MEMS technology, and adds a range of virtually loss-less RF MEMS switches to its growing portfolio of industry leading RF MEMS tuners. Together the new components will enable a wide range of radio front-end applications, including the high-performance tuning of antennas, filters and power amplifiers as well as ultra-low loss switching of the RF signal path.

“There is a critical need for low loss RF switching as OEMs design radios for 4G and 5G capability, and commercializing our ultra-low loss RF MEMS switch to meet this need is a major focus for Cavendish, now that our first generation RF MEMS tuners have fully ramped and are shipping commercially” ,said Paul Dal Santo, CEO of Cavendish Kinetics. “SOI switch technology is fundamentally limited by its high insertion loss, and is not well suited for RF front-ends requiring high voltage handling or high linearity. Our RF MEMS switches will deliver a 10x improved ‘figure of merit’ compared to what today’s SOI switches can achieve, transforming the way LTE radios are designed.”

Cavendish’s new generation of RF MEMS components is based on a simple enhancement of the revolutionary ‘switchlet array’ design with its proven MEMS cycle life of over 100B cycles. In addition to providing virtually loss-less RF MEMS switches, Cavendish’s next generation of RF MEMS tuners will now provide increased tuning range and RF voltage handling, enabling additional radio performance gains. Samples of Cavendish’s new generation RF MEMS components will be available in the first quarter of 2016, and ramp into volume production in the second half of 2016.

About Cavendish Kinetics

Cavendish Kinetics (www.cavendish-kinetics.com) is the leading provider of high-performance RF MEMS radio components for smartphones, handhelds and wearable devices. Cavendish’s SmarTune devices feature a MIPI RFFE interface, have been qualified beyond 100 billion cycles and are shipping in volume since 2014. Cavendish Kinetics is headquartered in San Jose, CA, with offices in Dallas, TX, China, Korea, and the Netherlands.