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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Primesense Raised $50M on Valuation of $300M

VC Cafe: Primesense has raised a $50M round from French investment bank Lazard Group, based on a valuation of $300M. This unusually high valuation for an imaging company just starting its mass production reflects the perceived need in a good depth-sensing 3D technology.

5 comments:

  1. Wow. That is amazing. About 1/4 the market cap of Omnivision. And the bank must be expecting at least 5-10x return on its investment.

    I wonder what happens when the big image sensor companies release 3D imaging chips at well under $10 a pop. It is not like the underlying IP is owned by Primesense, is it?

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  2. The beauty of Primesense solution is that it uses cheap off-the-shelf sensors. I was told that its whole BOM is in $10-20 range, including sensor, light source, lenses, processor, plastics, connectors, everything. Kinect also includes extra stuff, like microphone array and webcam, but pure Primesense portion of Kinect is cheap.

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  3. I understand why the average yield of French VCs is only 1%. They are too romantic!

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  4. The power of a relationship with Microsoft for a mainstream consumer UI system...

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  5. but this relationship can not last and the MS is a rich but not a fidel husband :)

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