Intel Spinoff GainSpan Closes On $19M In Series D Funding For Its WiFi Chip Technology

GainSpan, the semiconductor company that deals in ultra low-power Wi-Fi technology, will announced tomorrow that it has closed on $19 million in a new funding round.

The round, which first started gathering steam in 2012 and appears to have finalized at about $1 million less than the company had initially sought, serves as GainSpan’s Series D and brings its total outside funding to around $75 million.

This investment included the participation of two new investors — Zebra Technologies Corporation and Oplink Communications — and a slate of previous investors including Opus Capital, Intel Capital, New Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Camp Ventures and Hatteras Funds. GainSpan’s last funding round was an $18 million Series C that closed in December 2011.

I’m told that this new round comes as GainSpan’s growth continues as a nice clip. The company, which has around 90 full-time staff, has been more than doubling revenues and its customer base year-over-year, a spokesperson said today. GainSpan was founded as a standalone company in 2006 when it spun out of semiconductor superpower Intel.

GainSpan’s products are situated at the intersection of several hot areas in the larger tech industry. GainSpan makes ultra-low power embedded wireless chips and related software that enable various devices and objects to be connected to the Internet. This all is part of the much-buzzed-about “Internet of Things” era where nearly every physical object, from smartphones to kitchen gadgets to implanted medical devices, has some kind of web connectivity and a discrete identity in the virtual world.

In a quote provided by GainSpan, CEO Greg Winner said the new cash will be used for general growth purposes — hiring and product development:

“This funding will be used to help [our] products proliferate into a broad range of end products and to expand our sales, marketing and technical resources as we grow our customer base.”