Gimv Technology Weblog

Just before Christmas, we finalized an investment of € 3M in the company Movea. Movea is a spin off from CEA Leti, a worldwide leading research center in microelectronics based in Grenoble, France. Movea develops and commercializes mobile, wireless, cost and energy effective solutions for human motion capture and measurement. With its motion sensors modules Movea focuses both on the consumer electronics market, including pointing devices, media center remote controls and mobile phones, and the healthcare market, including monitoring of physical activity and physical therapy.  

The market for motion gesture control is taking up very rapidly.  Nintendo paved the way with the Wii and its motion-sensing wireless controller: a breakout hit. Many consumer electronics players are taking up the idea. We believe that soon you will be able to control computers, television sets, even cell phones with hand gestures. At the CES 2008 in Las Vegas, it was interesting to see several companies are developing products with motion capture inside. For instance the Apple iPhone has some motion detection. The future Windows Mobile 7 will process motion capture. JVC demonstrated a prototype TV with controls based on snaps and gesture. Sony unveiled the new Z555 phone with handy gesture control, letting you manage calls “with a wave of your hand”. We believe that future user interfaces will become more and more intuitive and that human gesture sensing will be part of it.  

Movea is a very early stage opportunity. It was founded in March 2007 by a team of experienced managers and researchers. We were initially interested by this very early stage opportunity for several reasons, among which:

·     We knew the CEO. We had met him in the past in another venture and had the pleasure of working with him. We strongly believe that he has the right skills to make it a success.

·     It is a spin-off from CEA Leti with a very solid technical team and a unique, patented technology developed at the Leti over a period of several years

·     It focuses on a solid healthcare market but also on the very promising and fast growing gesture control consumer market.

  Movea became an even more interesting opportunity when, after some work and discussions, we identified that it had the opportunity to acquire the company Gyration, the US leader in motion capture enabled consumer devices. Gyration has focused on solutions for the converged technologies market for more than 16 years. It is today a well-known established player on the consumer market, which, like Movea, enables intuitive cursor control from a couch or across a room by tracking natural hand motion. The acquisition was only made possible with the concomitant investment of the VCs iSource and GIMV. As a result, the deal moved from straightforward very early stage opportunity to a later stage deal based on a company acquisition to build an international player with offices in the US and France. Although it adds complexity, the benefit of the acquisition was very clear:

·     From day one, leadership on the consumer market  (position of Gyration today)

·     Technological complementarity (Gyroscopes, magnetometers and accelerometers)

·     Geographical complementarity (Europe and US)

·     Cultural complementarity (Europe and US)

·     Marketing complementarity (Consumer and Healthcare)

 With the financing and the acquisition behind us, we believe that Movea-Gyration is now very well positioned to become the worldwide leading provider of high precision, low power consuming and low cost motion capture solutions. A key success factor for the future is the proper integration of both teams to add the strengths of each and make one plus one greater than two.

Geoffroy