Back in late January, I wrote about Transmeta being picked up by Novafora, an alleged Israeli-fortress in the heart of Silicon Valley. Company's founders, Shlomo and Zaki Rakib were touted as the successful engineers and entrepreneurs who just might pull a serious punch.
Then again, in six months after the Transmeta acquisition, Novafora failed to open up a product or technology page, looking more like an umbrella company [or something even worse] for other investments rather than being a company that creates something tangible.
Recently, we heard that Novafora buckled under financial pressure from its investors. The company that claimed to have a safe financial net with investors having more than 1.3 billion USD in the bank just ate too big of a cake. Allegedly, acquisition of Transmeta and the associated costs combined with the situation on the market were too great for a small company such as Novafora, and the company is closing its doors. We e-mailed Novafora representatives on their e-mail accounts and heard no response since. A week was more than enough time to respond, but now we are certain that the game is over at Novafora.
What will happen to Transmeta's IP portfolio? Only time will tell… perhaps now companies like AMD, Intel or nVidia can snap it up for small change… or even players like Qualcomm, Texas Instruments etc. The biggest question is would Transmeta IP allow for an x86 license transfer, given that some parts of Transmeta's IP are in microprocessors from both Intel and AMD.
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