Navigator Technology Ventures announces investment in Sand Video

Cambridge, MA Navigator Technology Ventures (NTV) announced the closing of a Series A financing in their portfolio company, Sand Video, Inc. Also participating in the $8 million round were Baker Capital of New York and CommonAngels, located in Lexington. Led by CEO, Peter Besen, Sand Video is a fabless semiconductor manufacturer building real-time video compression technology based on the emerging H.264/MPEG-4 part 10 video compression standard.

Sand Video was founded in January 2001 with the goal of providing superior semiconductor based video compression technology to be used with a broad range of consumer video applications. Sand Video has staked out a leadership position in the development of semiconductor based H.264 technology. Their implementation of H.264 provides the full compression benefit of the standard without sacrificing image quality while maintaining complete backwards compatibility with the existing MPEG standards.

NTV, an affiliate of Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, MA and led by Alain Hanover and Rana K. Gupta, is an early-stage, technology venture capital firm that seeks to fund technology rich start-ups. With the assistance of Draper Laboratory, NTV invests in unique, highly proprietary technologies. NTV’s other portfolio companies are Polychromix, Inc, Sionex, Corp, and Actuality Systems, Inc. “As the early-stage investors, CommonAngels and Navigator are very pleased that the company has attracted Baker Capital as a major backer of Sand, with their extensive experience in the Video and chip space”, commented Alain Hanover. “With their patent-pending technology, Sand plans on becoming the leading provider of H.264 encoder/decoder chips and IP (Intellectual Property) to the rapidly expanding consumer DVD, HDTV and PVR (Personal Video Recorder) markets by dramatically reducing storage and bandwidth requirements for video.”

Baker Capital, based in New York City, is a private equity firm that manages over $1.5 Billion in capital. It was formed to capitalize on the dynamic opportunity in the communications industry. Baker Capital makes investments primarily in the communications equipment, services, and application provider areas.

CommonAngels, of Boston, MA, is a group of 50 leading private investors and three dozen limited partners in a co-investment fund. Since its founding in 1998, CommonAngels has funded 20 new companies headquartered in New England.