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Bedford-based GateRocket Inc., a maker of tools for chipmakers, has landed $1.9 million in a new round of equity funding, according to federal documents.
According to Dave Orecchio, president and CEO of GateRocket, the new round is an extension of the company’s Series A round and featured previous lead investors New Atlantic Ventures, Massachusetts Technology Development Corp. and Long River Ventures, along with participation from CommonAngels and seed-stage investors. GateRocket in September of 2008 received a $3 million first-round funding.
“We are using the funding to hire sales and invest in some marketing as we grow our business in the next year,” Orecchio said. The company now has eight full-time employees but will add three in the very near term, Orecchio said.
“We have really had no sales people in the company, so it’s just been the founder and myself doing the business,” Orecchio said. “We set a plan for this year and just recently closed some business that helped us exceed our plan for 2009.”
GateRocket’s tools are used for verification and debugging of Field Programmable Gate Arrays, chips that are becoming more popular as replacements for Application Specific Integrated Circuits, which have software burned into them and cannot be updated after being made. FPGAs, while more expensive than ASICs, can be reprogrammed if needed.
Among the customers using GateRocket’s RocketDrive device are Massachusetts firms Empirix Inc. of Bedford and MIT Lincoln Laboratory, as well as Qualcomm Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc. in California, and giant Alcatel-Lucent, Orecchio said.
The company was founded in 2003 as Boston Semiconductor Inc. by CTO Chris Schalick, and changed its name in December of 2004. With the latest funding, GateRocket has taken in approximately $6.4 million in venture funding.
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