• Alien Technology

  Led · Equity · Mar 2010

  Alien Technology provides UHF RFID integrated circuits (ICs), tags, readers and professional services to industries including consumer packaged goods, retail apparel, manufacturing, transportation, airports and cargo logistics, government and defense. Founded in 1994 and based in Morgan Hill, California, the company also maintains facilities in the Dayton, Ohio region and a sales office in Shanghai, China. It is led by newly appointed CEO Chris Chang. The company announced it received a $35M investment. Backers include new investor Shanghai Ruizhang Investment alongside current investors. The company said the new funds will enable it to accelerate growth through increased development of new technologies. Alien Technology is a provider of UHF RFID products and services. The company supplies UHF RFID products and offers related services to customers across multiple regions. It is headquartered in Morgan Hill, California, and operates Alien Technology Asia in South Korea and an RFID Solutions Center in the Dayton, Ohio region. Alien also maintains sales offices in the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. According to the article, the company secured an aggregate of $10.9M in new financing. The round was led by existing investors Advanced Equities, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Sunbridge Partners. Alien Technology designs and manufactures radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip tags, inlays and high-value readers, using a "fluidic self-assembly" packaging method developed by founder John S. Smith. The company operates factories in Fargo, N.D. and San Jose and is based in Morgan Hill, Calif. Its manufacturing can package up to two million chips per hour, far exceeding conventional methods, and it supplies both tags and readers so customers can implement end-to-end RFID tracking systems. Alien has seen strong recent top-line momentum: fiscal 2008 revenues grew more than 50% year-over-year, unit volume of assembled inlays rose over 76%, and the company set revenue records in each of the past four quarters. The business targets pallet/item tracking and asset-tracking use cases such as court-file and drug-shipment tracking, but faces competition from chip makers and inlay/reader suppliers including Impinj, NXP, Avery Dennison, UPM Raflatac and Sirit, as well as barcode competitors like YottaMark. The company employs about 200 people and has a history of heavy cash consumption, having burned through approximately $302 million to date.

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