Swedish GPS start-up Nordnav sold for $75m

- World leader in Bluetooth technology, CSR, strengthens its product portfolio through acquisition

3i Group plc, InnovationsKapital and smac partners together with Nordnav’s management, have agreed to sell Nordnav, a Swedish pioneer in next generation GNSS receivers, to Cambridge Silicon Radio (LSE: CSR.L). The purchase price for all shares in the company is approximately $75 million. InnovationsKapital and 3i co-led the first investment round in Nordnav in May 2005.

Kimmo Korpela, Director, 3i Nordic, comments on the sale:”This transaction has very clear logic in the industry and is a very good outcome for Nordnav and its shareholders. We, at 3i, are especially delighted to have demonstrated our value by introducing Nordnav to CSR, a highly successful company and originally a 3i investment.”

Peder Holm, Investment Director, InnovationsKapital, says: “This is a successful investment that will generate up to 8 times our total investment in the company.”

Nordnav, which was founded 2002 by two researches from Luleå University and Stanford University, Per Ludvig Normark and Dennis Akos, is today a market leader in the software GNSS receiver market, providing the only genuinely working GPS software solution for mobile devices. Nordnav develops and licenses software receivers for GPS and Galileo that offer both better performance and significant cost savings compared with alternatives. The company’s solutions enable high quality location functionality to be built into any portable device, including mobile phones, PDAs, and automotive navigation systems.

Fredrik Cronqvist, Investment Manager, InnovationsKapital, adds: “We believe that CSR is a great industrial partner that can make a large and successful business out of Nordnav’s world leading GPS technology. This acquisition will enable CSR to provide GPS in mass-market mobile handsets at a significantly lower price compared to competitors.”

CSR plc is a world leader in Bluetooth technology, which 3i co-founded as part of a syndicate in 1999 and helped to float on the London Stock Exchange in 2004.

Arma Partners has acted as the vendor’s advisor in the transaction.


For further information, please contact:
Kimmo Korpela, Director, 3i Nordic plc, advisor for 3i Group plc:
Tel. +46 8 506 101 44, +46 70 348 88 19

Peder Holm, Investment Director, InnovationsKapital:
+46 8 54 50 14 93, +46 703 46 57 70

Fredrik Cronqvist, Investment Manager, InnovationsKapital:
+46 8 54 50 14 92, +46 703 13 73 33

Dr. Dietrich Ulmer, Managing Partner, smac partners GmbH:
+49 89 55 06 88 11, +49 173 53 45 851

Mattias Åström, Chief Executive Officer, Nordnav Technologies: +46 8 39 0000