Semiconductor chip maker Quantenna Communications has a new strategic investor on board, and her name is Telefónica.
Through its investment arm Telefónica Ventures, a division of Telefónica Digital, the Spanish broadband and telecom company has made an equity investment to gain access to the latest Quantenna technology for the deployment of video services to the home.
Quantenna, which provides Wi-Fi networking solutions for ‘whole home’ entertainment, is also backed by VC firms like Sequoia Capital, Venrock, Sigma Partners, Southern Cross Venture Partners, DAG Ventures, Swisscom Ventures and Grazia Equity.
In a press statement, Telefónica speaks of a “looming bottleneck” on the “limited capabilities of current wireless technologies” and says Quantenna’s family of chipsets enables manufacturers to build products for delivering IPTV and other video streaming and data distribution services throughout the home over a high-performance Wi-Fi connection.
Quantenna’s technology will be a core component of Telefónica’s growth strategy for IPTV deployments in Europe and Latin America, the company added.
Telefónica declined to disclose the size of its investment in Quantenna.