Funding issues pull shutters down at Sequoia

SAN DIEGO, USA: Owing to failure in securing additional funding, Sequoia Communications Inc, the San Diego-based fabless RF semiconductor vendor, has downed shutters.

Sequoia had earlier raised about $64 million in venture capital funding over several rounds. Industry sources said that Sequoia was forced to end operations despite having working parts and customers because it failed to raise the needed capital to continue.

With the new decision coming up, the company's investors are now believed to be moving to dispose of Sequoia, either in pieces or as a whole.

With global recession and a dearth of venture capital dollars having their impact, it has been reported that a slew of startups companies have been forced to shut down over the past so many months. There is fear that many more will follow.

It is being believed that venture capital, the most vital component to the semiconductor industry, is leaving silicon startups high and dry as costs of bringing a new processor or system-on-chip to market are turning to be more prohibitive.

This is what has happened with Sequoia too. The company had earlier been in the news for offering a multimode transceiver that supported several specifications, including HSUPA, TD-SCDMA, S-Band and GMR satellite specifications.

Meanwhile, though talk of a shut down has been gaining momentum, company top brass have preferred to observe a silence on the development.