Sydney IoT microchip maker gets up and running

Sydney-based IoT microchip developer, Morse Micro has raised $23.8 million in Series A funding to start mass production of its ultra-low power Wi-Fi chip.

While the chips will be made overseas, the R&D, which grew from Australia’s wi-fi leadership history, will be based in the Sydney CBD.

CSIRO’s innovation fund, Main Sequence Ventures (MSV), lead the capital raising alongside US semiconductor guru, Ray Stata.

Other investors include Skip Capital, Blackbird Ventures, Right Click Capital, Uniseed, and the federal government’s Clean Energy Innovation Fund.

Leading the new venture are Andrew Terry and Michael De Nil, who left US Wi-Fi chipmaker Broadcom to develop ultra-low power Wi-Fi chips with extended range for IoT devices.

Their chip uses a 900MHz radio band, compared to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands used by conventional Wi-Fi.

However the investors are really backing the broader technical team, currently located at Australian Technology Park, Redfern, and led by founder of Radiata, Professor Neil Weste.

‘Others involved ‘ hardly does justice to the likes of John Sullivan, the inventor of wi-fi’s underlying technology, Radiata veteran Dave Goodall and Taggle founder, Gordon Foyster.

Picture: Morse Micro

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