Allinea Announces Investment and Record Sales
Concurrent Thinking receives funding to maintain rapid growth of its Streamline Computing and Allinea Software business units
Warwick, UK – October 25, 2006 – Alongside record 2006 sales, Concurrent Thinking Ltd, a leading provider of High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and software, today announced a significant investment of £1.7M ($3.1M) from a consortium of UK investors including Oxford Capital Partners, the Forward Group, and existing investor, the Advantage Growth Fund. The funding will allow the company to scale both its cluster computing division, Streamline Computing, and its parallel tools division, Allinea Software.
“Over the lifetime of the company, Concurrent has demonstrated exceptional growth while investing significantly in R&D,” said Dr Michael Rudgyard, CEO and founder. “Since its inception in 2000, Streamline Computing has become the UK’s leading HPC Cluster provider, building a profitable, high-turnover business and an impressive list of customers across Europe and the Middle East. At the same time we have built Allinea Software – a development tools business whose worldwide growth mirrors that of the burgeoning parallel and multi-core computing marketplace. The investment announced today will not only allow the company to grow its existing business units, but will also permit it to bring other internal R&D projects to market in the form of new products. We welcome the new partnership with Oxford Capital Partners and the Forward Group, as well as the continued support of existing investors such as the Advantage Growth Fund, in helping us to achieve our ambitious goals.”
Some of the funds will be used to grow Allinea’s business, and in particular to maintain the rapid growth in sales of its Distributed Debugging Tool (DDT) and Optimization and Profiling Tool (OPT) products. “As demonstrated by recent announcements of multi-core processors by virtually every chip manufacturer, the need for a new generation of tools for parallel computing is evident. The company’s past investment in DDT and OPT – products that are now proven in HPC, where large-scale parallelism is the norm – has positioned Allinea as a leader in the field,” said Jacques Philouze, VP of Sales and Marketing for Allinea Software. “This funding will help us to expand our sales operations and explore new markets for our products”, he added. Allinea Software will be exhibiting at Supercomputing (SC06) in Tampa, USA on November 11 -17, as well as the MultiCore Expo conferences in Tokyo from October 31 to November 1 and in Munich, Germany from November 14 – 15.
"Oxford Capital Partners is delighted to support Concurrent Thinking at this stage of its growth and to have led this round of funding, which should allow the company to expand more forcefully into the international arena and develop the next generation of tools for the next generation of supercomputers.” said Dr Victor Christou, Investment Manager at Oxford Capital Partners.
About Concurrent Thinking Ltd.
Based in Warwick (UK), Concurrent Thinking Ltd was founded by computer scientists from Warwick and Oxford Universities in late 2000. It currently operates through Streamline Computing, the UK’s leading integrator of cluster supercomputers, and Allinea Software, a parallel tools company with a worldwide customer base. Both Streamline and Allinea have seen extremely rapid growth over recent years, the company receiving recognition as the 34th fastest growing technology company in the UK in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 in 2006. Previous investors include the Mercia Fund, Warwick University, the Advantage Growth Fund and Oxford VCT 3.
About Oxford Capital Partners
Oxford Capital Partners is a science and technology specialist venture capital firm. Its team uses its many years of hands on, global, operating experience to support and build exceptional companies with high growth potential. Oxford Capital Partners invests in companies from an early stage through to IPO and has a particular focus on assisting companies with their international expansion. Oxford Capital Partners is committed to support the growth of the technology base in both the UK and Europe.
Oxford Capital Partners manages the Oxford Gateway Funds, Fund No.1 (1999), Fund No.2 (2003) and Fund No.3 (2005), which have made over 30 investments in technology and life science sectors.
Oxford Capital Partners was voted Venture Capital House of the Year 2005 at the Unquote Awards.
About the Forward Group
Forward Group is an evergreen private equity Fund with over £100m of assets under management, which offers support not only with funds, but also assists with operational, financial and strategic support where necessary.
Through its wholly owned subsidiary, Forward Venture Management Limited, Forward Group makes and manages investments of between £250,000 and £10m in young and growing companies in the UK.
The company has experience and is comfortable in investing in technology, leisure, property and specialist engineering including medical.
About the Advantage Growth Fund
Midven Limited is a privately owned company with a successful track record of investing in small and medium-sized enterprises in the Midlands. It manages a variety of funds and has invested in various sectors, including software, biotechnology, healthcare, engineering, manufacturing and distribution.
The £20 million Advantage Growth Fund was launched in February 2003 by Advantage West Midlands to invest venture capital in small and medium-sized companies in the West Midlands. Managed by Midven Limited, its investors include Barclays Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, the European Investment Fund, local universities and the Department of Trade and Industry.
