Grandis, Inc. was founded in 2002 by Paul Nguyen. It was backed by

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firms such as

Sevin Rosen Funds Sevin Rosen Funds (SRF) is a Texas-based venture capital firm credited with pioneering the personal computing revolution in the 1980s and also venture investing in Dallas. It was established in 1981 by L. J. Sevin, a former Texas Instruments eng ...

and

Matrix Partners Matrix Partners is a US-based private equity investment firm focusing on venture capital investments. The firm invests in seed and early-stage companies in the United States and India, particularly in the software, communications, semiconduct ...

to pioneer non-volatile solutions based on

spintronics Spintronics (a portmanteau meaning spin transport electronics), also known as spin electronics, is the study of the intrinsic spin of the electron and its associated magnetic moment, in addition to its fundamental electronic charge, in solid-st ...

. The solutions it developed were

thin-film memory Thin-film memory is a high-speed alternative to core memory developed by Sperry Rand in a government-funded research project. Instead of threading individual ferrite cores on wires, thin-film memory consisted of 4-micrometre thick dots of per ...

, which included the invention of spin transfer torque - random access memory (STT-RAM).

History

Grandis, Inc. was founded in Milpitas, CA in 2002 by Dr Paul Nguyen, a thin-film coating expert from IBM, as president. Bill Almon was then brought in to help with fundraising. Afterwards, the company hired Yiming Huai as CTO, among other employees as it expanded its operation. Farhad Tabrizi, a seasoned executive from

Lexar Media Lexar Media, Inc. is a Chinese brand of flash memory products manufactured by the Chinese company Longsys. The Lexar "JumpDrive" trademark was often used synonymously with the term USB flash drives when the technology was first adopted. Hist ...

/ Micron Technology and

Hynix SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Hynix is the world's second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world's third-largest semiconductor company. ...

, joined later as CEO. Tabrizi, together with first-tier venture capitalist Steve Dominik, played an instrumental role in establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships with important partners such as Hynix and

Renesas is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, initially incorporated in 2002 as Renesas Technology, the consolidated entity of the semiconductor units of Hitachi and Mitsubishi excluding their dynamic random-access memo ...

. Grandis invented the first spin-transfer torque thin film structures based on magnetic tunnel junctions and quickly became the leader in the STT-RAM space. In 2011, Grandis was acquired by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd and merged into Samsung's memory operations.

Products and technologies

Grandis supplies

thin film memory Thin-film memory is a high-speed alternative to core memory developed by Sperry Rand in a government-funded research project. Instead of threading individual ferrite cores on wires, thin-film memory consisted of 4-micrometre thick dots of pe ...

devices. The company is also a licensor of

magnetoresistive random-access memory Magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) is a type of non-volatile random-access memory which stores data in magnetic domains. Developed in the mid-1980s, proponents have argued that magnetoresistive RAM will eventually surpass competing tec ...

(MRAM) process and design technology to

fabless semiconductor companies Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

, wafer foundries, and

integrated device manufacturer An integrated device manufacturer (IDM) is a semiconductor company which designs, manufactures, and sells integrated circuit (IC) products. IDM is often used to refer to a company which handles semiconductor manufacturing in-house, compared to ...

s. Target applications include storage,

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physica ...

s, and

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

ing. Grandis technology sought to address the problems of write selectivity and speed, low read signal, and thermal stability from which other products in the Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) industry suffered.

Investors

Grandis's capital investors included

, Sevin Rosen Partners, and Applied Materials Ventures. The acquisition by

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

resulted in a very successful exit for Grandis's investors.{{cite news, url=https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/08/02/the-daily-start-up-samsung-makes-mram-push-with-grandis-buy/ , title=The Daily Start-Up: Samsung Makes MRAM Push With Grandis Buy , publisher=WSJ , date=2011-08-02 , accessdate=2011-08-02

References

Fabless semiconductor companies Computer memory companies Companies based in Sunnyvale, California Semiconductor companies of the United States