Supercharged wireless spinout raises £5.8m to drive global expansion

University of Southampton spinout AccelerComm has secured £5.8m in funding to supercharge 5G, satellite and other wireless communications with cutting-edge techniques for digital signal processing.

The rapidly expanding business was founded by Professor Rob Maunder in 2016, commercialising research in the field of channel coding from the Next Generation Wireless group.

The latest Series A funding round was led by IQ Capital alongside existing investors Bloc Ventures and the IP Group, building upon £2.5m that was raised in 2018.

Professor Maunder, Chief Technology Officer of AccelerComm, says: "We are really excited to have completed this investment round. Since spinning out AccelerComm, each successive investment round has been a level-up, allowing us to do more with the research that started in the School of Electronics and Computer Science. We are constantly reaching more of the telecoms market and becoming more and more strategic in our approach."

AccelerComm's channel coding IP is used to correct transmission errors in mobile, small cell and satellite communications caused by noise, interference and poor signal strength. This technology is optimised for the specific needs of cellular and satellite communications to provide market leading performance and efficiency.

Driven by a leadership team comprising executives and senior talent from ARM, Qualcomm and Ericsson, the company was recently named in the EE Times Silicon 100: Emerging Startups to Watch and continues to push the state-of-the-art in channel coding technology.

Tom Cronk, CEO of AccelerComm says: "From gaming and VR to automated robotic manufacturing lines and telemedicine, the use cases on the road to 5G appear almost limitless. But a critical roadblock remains - latency.

"For more than 15 years a research team led by Professor Maunder, first at the University of Southampton and now at AccelerComm, has been working to solve the challenge to deliver on the 5G promise of a low latency, high throughput experience.

"We are delighted to have closed our Series A funding round, which will help us further develop and deploy our already market leading technology to help improve the efficiency of networks for many years to come."

AccelerComm is based at the University of Southampton Science Park in Chilworth. The new funding will be used to expand the current team, drive US and global expansion, and develop the technology further as demand for the company's digital signal processing IP grows among mobile operators, telecoms equipment vendors, satellite operators and connected device manufacturers.