A Laguna Niguel startup launched by a former Broadcom Corp. executive has attracted the former president and vice chairman of Qualcomm Inc. to its board.
Steve Altman, the chief architect behind Qualcomm’s lucrative intellectual property licensing business, acquired a minority stake in MagnaCom Ltd. as part of the agreement. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
“This is by far the most experienced and most proven IP licensing person on the planet,” said Yossi Cohen, MagnaCom’s cofounder and chief executive.
Cohen has some first-hand knowledge, having met Altman during Broadcom and Qualcomm’s contentious patent feud that lasted for years. The dispute between the rivals began in 2005 and cost both chipmakers millions as they argued in court and before trade commissions.
Cohen held management positions in Broadcom’s mobile platforms group and Bluetooth business unit and led the company’s launch of gigabyte Ethernet products.
In the final settlement, Qualcomm agreed to pay $891 million to Broadcom for various licenses. The agreement, reached nearly five years ago, ended last April with Qualcomm’s final payment.
MagnaCom’s technology, which can be built into chips, are billed to unclog the spectrum capacity limits facing every wired and wireless system, from broadband and DSL to Wi-Fi and 5G connections.
The company, which was founded in late 2012 and emerged from stealth mode late last year, demonstrated its bandwidth-freeing technology during the International Consumer Electronics Show in January.
“This is a fundamental shift,” said Cohen, who most recently served as senior vice president and general manager at Motorola Mobility before its $12.5 billion acquisition by Google Inc. in 2012.
The company’s 15 employees are based outside of Tel Aviv, Israel, the hometown of Cohen and cofounder Amir Eliaz, who also serves as chief technology officer.
Headset’s Fantasy World
Irvine startup Oculus VR Inc. wowed more audiences recently at the South by Southwest festival with its demo that threw users into the fantasy world created in the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones.”
Viewers were thrust into an interactive 3-D setting at Castle Black, where they rode an elevator to the top of a giant wall for a battle with the evil Wildlings, ghost-like skeletons that wield axes, swords and other weapons.
HBO worked with London-based visual effects firm Framestore, which has an office in Los Angeles, and New York marketing agency Relevent to create the Ascend the Wall content.
The fantasy world was made possible through Oculus’ $300 virtual headset Oculus Rift, which has garnered plenty of industry accolades and awards since its debut and has sold more than 50,000 units, mostly to code developers.
The device carries the potential for a wide range of applications, including training simulations and education.
The company raised $91 million last year in two funding rounds, with lead backers including venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in Menlo Park, and Spark Capital and Matrix Partners, both based in Boston.
Oculus this month hired virtual reality expert and former Intel developer Atman Binstock as its chief architect.
The company said Binstock, who most recently ran virtual reality projects at Bellevue, Wash.-based Valve Corp., will be spearheading its new research and development team in the Seattle area.
