Friday, July 11, 2008

ThingMagic grabs $9.5M in new funding

Executives at Cambridge  radio  frequency identification technology maker ThingMagic Inc. report the company has a closed a $9.5 million round of funding.

With the new round of funding, the RFID company has raised nearly $30 million since its inception in 2000. Investors include Hale Ventures LLC in Cambridge, The Exxel Group, based in Argentina, and Cisco Systems Inc.

The 40-person company will use the new financing to expand its product development and penetrate new vertical markets, according to Tom Grant, chairman and CEO.

“The holy grail of RFID has been supply chain management, and I think that will come to fruition, eventually, but is coming slower than people expected,” he said. “So we have been moving into a lot of vertical consumer applications.”

Among those applications is the tracking of hand-tools and other equipment in the beds of pickup trucks through a joint development partnership with Ford Motor Co. and  tool manufacturer DeWALT, which is a brand name of Maryland-based Black & Decker Corp. — a deal announced earlier this year.

While Grant said the company is generating revenue and “see(s) the path to profitability,” he would not disclose financial details.

According to Grant and analysts, the RFID industry has been on the upswing of late. Locally, Waltham-based RFID application software and middleware maker OATSystems Inc. was acquired by New Jersey-based Checkpoint Systems Inc. for an undisclosed amount last month. In addition, Reva Systems Inc. of Chelmsford recently announced a partnership with Korean IT service provider Samsung SDS  to include its products in Samsung SDS’s product offerings, and Cambridge-based Tagsys RFID Group Inc. last month launched a new project with Spanish clothing retailer Boboli to use RFID to track retail items through the point of sale.