Black Sand Technologies, a small-cap genius bet

You won’t find detailed information on stealth startup Black Sand Technologies from their web-site. About the only things you will find is that they are a fabless semiconductor company based out of Austin, TX developing solutions for the wireless industry. Additionally, the company recently successfully completed raising $8.2 Million in Series A Financing from Austin Ventures and North Bridge Partners. Lucky for us, the Austin American-Statesman recently found out a few more details about the startup and was nice enough to share them with us in an editorial. A short summery of the findings: The company, currently employs just a dozen people and expects the initial funding to last about two years, or just long enough to design chips that revolutionaize how wireless devices amplify data and voice signals. It seems that most of the current staff previously worked at Silicon Laboratories, which by the way was also funded by Austin Ventures. The company mission at this point is to come up with a technique to implement power amplifiers using conventional silicon chip technology, thus making them much easier to integrate with a wide range of wireless devices. Keep in mind that what conventional silicon technology actually means is left to the reader’s interpretation. While I don’t know any of the founders personally, it seems that most people who do, consider them to be top notch, and it will be wise to keep an eye on the company in the near future. Chip samples are expected to become available at the end of 2008. In the mean time, if you are really interested and want to find out some more details or even partake in the adventure, Black Sand Technologies is currently looking for some experienced and talented mixed-signal and RF engineers.