The investors list in this round is impressive: Samsung Ventures, Foxconn, and MediaTek. Corephotonics’ current investors include Magma VC, Samsung Ventures, Amiti Ventures, Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing and Solina Chau’s Horizon Ventures, OurCrowd, SanDisk, Chinese telephony services provider CK Telecom, and additional private investors.
The investment, along with the existing cash on hand and revenue forecast for 2017, will be used for developing next generation cameras for smartphones, and for expanding existing products’ penetration. In addition, the new funding will help Corephotonics expand into the automotive, drone, surveillance, and action camera markets.
Corephotonics, which currently has 50 employees, intends to recruit dozens of additional engineers for the company’s headquarters in Tel Aviv, as well as support and integration engineers in China and South Korea, following an expected significant growth in sales. In addition, the company is exploring opportunities to acquire complementary technologies.
The company co-founder and CEO David Mendelovic said, “We established Corephotonics in order to improve the image quality in smartphones, and to provide consumers with a unique user experience, after we identified this need of device manufacturers. We successfully predicted the use of dual cameras, and we currently see such cameras being integrated into a broad range of smartphones by all leading manufacturers. We are pleased that top tier investors have expressed confidence in our capabilities, allowing us to develop next generation camera technologies, which will reach the market within the next few years.”
Corephotonics Hummingbird module |