October 16, 2008 --Achronix Semiconductor Corp. has announced the first closing of a $52 million Series B preferred stock financing. The first $43 million of the $52 million financing was closed on Oct. 10, with the remainder to close in the next several weeks. The proceeds from the financing will be used to fund the development of next-generation products and to support the rapidly accelerating demand for the recently-announced Speedster family of 1.5-GHz FPGAs.

Argonaut Private Equity led the financing, with the original group of Series A investors including Battery Ventures, New Science Ventures, Easton Capital Investment Group and Entrepia Ventures all participating significantly.

"The challenging macroeconomic environment has raised the bar for companies seeking financing of this magnitude," said Jason Martin, Managing Director at Argonaut Private Equity. "Achronix's FPGA technology packaged in a familiar design environment, a strong track record of execution and tremendous customer traction for Speedster all presented a compelling opportunity for us. With Speedster and a variety of exciting next-generation products, Achronix is in a unique position to address the current and future demands of high-performance ASIC and FPGA users."

The Achronix Series B financing is one of the largest for a venture-backed semiconductor company in recent history and occurs on the heels of the successful global launch of the Speedster family of FPGAs. Speedster FPGAs provide a three-fold increase in performance compared to traditional FPGAs and are ideally suited for high-performance applications typically dominated by ASICs, such as networking, telecommunications, test and measurement, and encryption.