A chip startup that’s flown under the radar for a few years now is trying to make its name known.
Irvine’s RFaxis Inc., which designs chips for networked mobile devices, sampled its products at a big electronics trade show last week.
“I wanted to keep the company in stealth mode until I had working products,” said founder and Chief Executive Mike Neshat, who quietly launched the company in 2007. “We were in hiding for almost two years.”
The fledgling company debuted two chips at Taiwan’s Computex trade show. The chips are designed to improve devices that receive and transmit information on local networks.
RFaxis targets what’s known as front-end circuitry, the most finicky part of a circuit board.
“In our industry, the front end has always had problems with cost, reliability and integration,” Neshat said. “Over the past few years a lot of progress has been made, but no one has really been able to solve it in the way we have.”
The front-end circuits deal with power consumption, amplification of signals, filtering of signals and the switching back and forth between receiving and transmitting functions.
“It’s the most sensitive part of the circuit,” Neshat said.
It’s also the most costly to engineer and make.
RFaxis’ chips are intended to reduce the complexity of wireless designs, lower manufacturing costs and lower power consumption.
The company, which has a dozen workers here, is seeking customers among makers of networked devices, including Taiwan’s D-Link Corp., which has its U.S. headquarters in Fountain Valley, Netgear Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and others.
It’s also looking to sell its designs to companies that make Bluetooth chips, such as Irvine’s Broadcom Corp., for headsets, cars and computers.
Other potential customers include cell phone makers and, in the future, makers of TVs that get signals via wireless networks.
Potential competitors include Woburn, Mass.-based Skyworks Solutions Inc., which has offices in Newport Beach, Irvine’s Microsemi Corp., RF Micro Devices Inc. and Anadigics Inc., among others.
RFaxis recently inked deals with distributors in Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea, Neshat said. His goal is $20 million in sales next year.
Neshat, 46, is a local semiconductor veteran with more than 25 years in the industry.
He has a long track record of getting involved in chip startups early on and selling them to big name players.
“Startups have to come around only to solve a problem,” Neshat said. “This was a difficult problem that existed in the electronic wireless industry and I thought it was the perfect time to solve it.”
Neshat put in his own money to get the company off the ground. A small round of angel funds came later.
“We rode the economic disaster knowing that it would take a year and a half to two years to do the engineering work,” he said. “We put our sweat and our money into this because even during bad times you can start good companies.”
At RFaxis, Neshat has already fended off his share of interested buyers.
“We gave them a very strong ‘no, thank you,'” he said. “Our goal is to take this forward for a few years. I want this to become a very highly respected and innovative analog RF company. We have all the ingredients to do it.”
