It's official. Calxeda has kicked the bucket.
The Austin-based chip design startup, which pioneered the idea of bringing ARM-based chips to new small server designs, has closed its office, effectively leaving 130-odd employees searching for new jobs.
In a statement sent to VentueBeat, Calxeda's Vice President of Marketing, Karl Freund, said the company will be restructuring to "determine what happens to the assets and people."
"For now, we have closed our office and sent everyone home except a few people to continue to support our customers. We have about 130 employees. The product remains available and will be sold/serviced by whatever company takes shape after the restructuring," Freund said.
Though Calxeda had raised $90 million in venture capital funding in the past (the most recent funding was in October 2012, when the company announced it received $55 million from Austin Ventures, Vulcan Capital and other investors), Freund said it was a "shame" they "ran out of money" at a time when the market is "just materializing."
"The financing we thought we had lined up disappeared quite suddenly and we ran out of runway to put another deal together," he said.
It's not clear at this stage whether Calxeda will file for banruptcy or simply unwind its operations, but the company's demise does not mean a defeat for the overall ARM server movement. In fact, the idea has been gaining a lot of traction in recent times with established players such as Applied Micro Systems, Nvidia, Marvell Technology and Samsung, showing interest.
"While some might believe Calxeda's failure is a reflection of poor end-market demand for ARM-based servers, we strongly believe that it is a reflection of company-specific challenges rather than weak end-market demand," said market research firm William Blair analyst Anil Doradla.
Agrees investment banking advisory firm Evercore Partners analyst Patrick Wang. "We believe Calxeda was actually ahead of the curve and perhaps too early to market as it didn't exist," said Wang.
