Grandis

Grandis Inc.Type| Private

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Industry| Spin Transfer Torque Random Access Memory (STT MRAM)
Founded| 2002
Headquarters| Milpitas, California

Key people

| Dr. Paul Nguyen  (Founder) , Bill Almon  (Co-founder) , Farhad Tabrizi  (CEO)
Products| General purpose and specialty thin film memory and technology

Number of employees

| ~30
Website| [1]

Grandis, Inc. was founded in 2002 by Dr. Paul Nguyen and Bill Almon. Farhad Tabrizi later joined as CEO. It was backed by venture capital firms such as Sevin Rosen Funds and Matrix Partners to pioneer non-volatile solutions based on spintronics. The solutions it developed were thin-film memory, which included the invention of spin transfer torque - random access memory (STT-RAM).

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Products and technologies
* 3 Investors
* 4 References

## History

Grandis, Inc. was founded in Milpitas, CA in 2002 by Dr. Paul Nguyen as the first CEO/president and Bill Almon who later became CEO. [1] After receiving initial seed fundings the company started to hire new employees to expand operations. Farhad Tabrizi, a seasoned executive from Lexar Media/Micron Technology and Hynix joined later as a new CEO. Tabrizi, together with first venture capitalist Steve Dominik, played an instrumental role in establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships with important partners such as Hynix and Renesas.

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.[2]

## Products and technologies

Grandis supplies thin film memory devices. The company is also a licensor of magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) process and design technology to fabless semiconductor companies, wafer foundries and integrated device manufacturers. Target applications include storage, telecommunications, mobile devices and computer networking.

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.[citation needed]

## Investors

Grandis's capital investors included Matrix Partners, Sevin Rosen Partners and Applied Materials Ventures. The acquisition by Samsung resulted in a very successful exit for Grandis's investors.[3]

## References

1. ↑ "Grandis Founders". Tracexn. 2007-09-01. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/grandis/__GHZu9MspeuRF8S8s6PKpQ4lzBUbRVuHGHCNIfmscmTk/founders-and-board-of-directors. Retrieved 2020-02-01.
2. ↑ "Samsung Buys Grandis As MRAM Moves Toward Mainstream". Fox Business. 2011-08-01. http://m.foxbusiness.com/quickPage.html?page=34721&content=54407236&pageNum=-1. Retrieved 2011-08-01.
3. ↑ "The Daily Start-Up: Samsung Makes MRAM Push With Grandis Buy". WSJ. 2011-08-02. https://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/08/02/the-daily-start-up-samsung-makes-mram-push-with-grandis-buy/. Retrieved 2011-08-02.

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