DISQUS

VentureBeat: RFID company Alien wants to be valued at half a billion — despite growing red ink

  • Jorge · 3 years ago
    Hay Ohmbray-

    What are cahones?
  • mike · 3 years ago
    I think most people probably understand this without having to have it explained to them but, for those that don't, "cohones" is the phonetic spelling of "cojones"
  • RK · 3 years ago
    I think the VC's want to collect, there $200M investment ASAP. They realize in EPC G2 Passive Tag market there is no money to be made which Alien is betting on, as a passive tag costs about 35 cents to build where as endusers such as P&G are willing to pay for it only 5 cents, also market is not getting the traction of billions or millions of tags yet, as customers are not able to realize ROI of this technology. On top of all this loss business, there are entrenched competitiors such as TI, Philips, and ST who own there own fabs and testing facility were they can backfill this product with high end DSP, MCU custom ASICs. Only IP Alien seem to have is FSA (Fluidic Self Assembly) which is used for packaging. So with all these barriers this is diffcult sell,of $500M in IPO.
  • MJ · 3 years ago
    Alien has continued to loss market share and they are to far underwater to rightup the ship. If Alien would have focused on working with their strategic partners and not sell direct to the clients they would have had a chance to control the price but that is too late. Alien should be considered a Junk Bond.
  • RNC · 3 years ago
    Let's just wait and see what happens in their legal battle with Intermec whose massive RFID-IP portfolio could further reduce revenues for this flailingly unfocused company. Philips licensed the FSA technology for possible use display technology, maybe Alien could pursue that market?
  • JRT · 3 years ago
    Check out Alien's past (where did the first $100M go??)......I think they started in the display market.....it seems like they never made a go of it (wonder why????????) - but maybe I missed something.
    IMHO, this dog can't hunt.....but there are a lot of suckers out there looking to give their $$$ away.

    Also....look hard......is FSA really being used? Great concept........so is cold fusion.
  • S · 3 years ago
    As a former employee, FSA is tried and true. First use was displays, but there was little market and lots of technical difficulty. RFID was a better match to FSA. It can be done!