UltraSoC receives £2m investment

Octopus Investments is investing £2m in university spin-out UltraSoC Technologies, a company developing debugging technology for embedded systems.

UltraSoC was spun-out from the universities of Essex and Kent in 2008 after being founded by Cambridge entrepreneur Dr Karl Heeks and Prof Klaus McDonald-Maier, research director at Essex University’s School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering.

The company is developing UltraDebug, a system that can be used to debug multiple processor systems.

Quick and efficient debugging of embedded electronic systems is growing in importance as these embedded systems are being used in more and more products such as laptops, smartphones and data processing systems.

The funding from Octopus Investments will help develop the technology into a licensable product and will see the technical and marketing operation expanded at UltraSoC’s main office in Cambridge.

The core technology being used by UltraSoC was initially supported by substantial funding from the EPSRC. In 2009, seed funding worth £400,000 was secured from the South East Seed Fund and Iceni Seedcorn Fund which allowed the company to open an office in Cambridge and progress its research work into a technology demonstrator.