Timeline
After its founding in 1995, Transmeta and its goals remained largely unknown until its corporate launch on January 19, 2000. After their initial public offering at the price of $21/share, the value skyrocketed to an all time high of $50.26 before settling down to $46/share on opening day. This made Transmeta the last of the great high tech IPOs of the dot-com bubble, not surpassed again until Google’s IPO in 2004. However, Transmeta had their first layoffs in July 2002, reducing the headcount of the company by 40%. On May 31, 2005, Transmeta announced the signing of asset purchase and license agreements with Hong Kong’s Culture.com Technology Limited. However, the deal fell apart due to delays in obtaining technology export licenses from the US Department of Commerce, and the parties announced the termination of the agreements on February 9, 2006. On August 10, 2005, Transmeta announced its first-ever profitable quarter. This was followed in 2006 by GameSpot’s report on March 20 that Transmeta was working on an “unnamed” Microsoft project. As it turned out, this was a secure platform under the AMD brand for Microsoft’s FlexGo program. On February 7, 2007, Transmeta closed its engineering services division, terminating 75 employees in the process. This was concurrent with an announcement that the company would no longer develop and sell hardware, but would focus on the development and licensing of intellectual property. Following this, AMD invested $7.5 million in Transmeta, planning to use the company’s patent portfolio in energy-efficient technologies. On August 8, 2008, Transmeta announced that it had licensed its LongRun and low-power chip technologies to Nvidia for a one-time license fee of $25 million. Later in the year, on November 17, Transmeta announced the signing of a definitive agreement to be acquired by Novafora, a digital video processor company based in San Diego, CA, for $255.6 million in cash, subject to adjustments dependent on working capital. The deal was finalized on January 28, 2009, when Novafora announced the completion of its acquisition of Transmeta.
Intellectual Venture Funding LLC completed the acquisition of the patent portfolio formerly developed and owned by Transmeta Corporation on February 4, 2009.
Due to financial troubles and inability to execute, Novafora collapsed in late July, 2009.
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