GRENOBLE — In line with its open innovation culture, Leti has expanded its vision and opened its doors to entrepreneurs coming from outside so as to help them bring their technology to maturity.

At the 11^th Leti Annual Review this week in Grenoble, France, Laurent Malier, CEO of Leti research center, declared: "We have expanded our vision. We are open to entrepreneurs outside of Leti and we are ready to develop technologies coming from outside so as to generate more value. Leti not only generates technologies in silicon. It is open to other technologies and models."

"Leti aims to ensure the coupling of technologies and applications," stated Malier to EE Times Europe. "Leti is seen as an Aladdin's cave for technologies. In the "More than Moore" domain, we have been working with companies that had no internal technologies but applicative projects. We offer them the technology to support their projects."

In 2009, Leti demonstrated its expanded vision when it accepted to host two startups whose technologies were not developed in its laboratories: IPdia (Caen, France) and Presto Engineering Inc. (San Jose), a provider of product engineering services to the semiconductor industry.

Established on June 1^st, IPdia once was part of NXP BV's integrated passive device unit in Cote de Nacre, near Caen, in the French region of Normandy. Its "PICS" passive integration (IPD) technology is said to be a highly efficient way to integrate 10’s to 100’s of passive components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors and Zener Diode into a single silicon die.

"Last year, I was presenting the technology as an employee of NXP now as the CEO of the company," declared Franck Murray, cofounder and CEO of IPdia. "We are not a Grenoble-based startup. We are only visitors to the Leti and will remain so."

"Our strategy is based upon two main axes, namely high brightness LED market and integrated passive devices for mobile, medical, industrial, aerospace and defense sectors," continued Murray. "This is supported by a technology roadmap. We have had confirmation that the technology is differentiated from competition. To continue this technology leadership, we need a R&D effort. We will work on advanced materials with CEA-Leti and CNRS-LAAS as part of a long-term partnership."

Murray said the company's ambition is to become the number one independent company in 3D miniaturization technologies. "We aim to increase our sales by four or five in five years, to 40 million euros ($56 million) in 2013, with profitability greater than 15 percent."

Ipdia obtained a capital investment of more than 5 million euros ($6.8 million) from a consortium of investors, including NXP. It employs 100 people.