Imaging and Machine Vision Europe published article on CMOSIS history "Superb in CMOS". Here are the milestones:
- Cmosis was created in November 2007 by five former employees of FillFactory, which had been sold to Cypress. The funding came from the founders, with assistance from a VC fund, totaling €1m of seed money, which is said to cover the first 18 months of development.
- In the first year, Cmosis set itself two goals: firstly, to check that the market still had need of the specific branch of CMOS technology in which they were all experts. Secondly, the team needed to develop its new IP, which had to be tested in hardware operation, and subsequently patented, while not infringing any third party’s (including FillFactory’s) IP.
- At the end of that first year, Cmosis had filed two patents: 8T fully pipelined global shutter pixel and fast column-level ADC
- During that first year, Cmosis also worked on its first custom design contract. This had the benefit of generating revenue at an earlier stage than perhaps Cmosis was expecting.
- An intermediate round in 2008, with the same investors, brought another €1m.
- With IP developed and a custom design contract in hand, the team was able to pursue another round of financing in August 2009, this time for a further €3m, with the help of a bank and some government supported investment funds. The money were used to move to larger offices, install a cleanroom, buy a wafer probing station. The company also invested in its infrastructure and expanded its team.
- First standard image sensor products for the machine vision market – the 2.2MP/340fps CMV 2000 and 4.2MP/180fps 4000, launched at the Stuttgart Vision show in Nov 2009.
- Leading names in the machine vision industry have adopted the sensors for their camera ranges, including Basler, Point Grey Research, IO Industries and Adimec.
- Sept. 2011, Cmosis has 35 employees based at its headquarters in Antwerp, Belgium.
- Future plans include the launch of a new product at the Vision show later this year, aimed at the lower end of the market.
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| Funding in 2009 allowed the company to invest in cleanroom facilities and a wafer prober for wafer testing |
