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Laser technology firm Intune to boost staff after €13m funding

Intune, an Irish laser technology firm, plans to hire 25 more staff after raising €13million in funding. Tom Fritzley, a former Microsoft and Tellabs executive who became chief executive of Intune last year, said the funds would be used to expand the firm’s Dublin base and to develop its product range.

Intune develops optical technology for the telecommunications industry. Intune employs about 35 people, having almost tripled in size since Fritzley took over last year. When Fritzley took over as chief executive, the firm employed 12 people. He said the firm would continue to expand and should have 50 staff in the coming months. Fritzley said the main expansion would come in research and development, with new engineering and technical staff being hired for product development.

He said the firm would be recruiting very few support staff for functions such as sales, marketing and administration. The €13 million funding round was led by Balderton Capital, the London-based venture capital firm that recently spun out from Benchmark Capital. Barry Maloney, the former chief executive of Esat Digifone, is a partner in Balderton, which has investments in companies including Setanta, Alphyra and Bebo. The other investors in the Intune funding round were Amadeus Capital Partners and Spark Capital.

The deal is understood to have valued Intune at about €27 million. Fritzley said that Intune had ‘‘changed direction’’ in the last year, with its focus shifting from ‘‘projects to products’’, and had decided to raise more funds. The company’s technology has applications for telecoms and cable companies trying to deliver voice, video and data services over one network. Intune last year completed a prototype of its new technology and demonstrated it at exhibitions in the US. Intune was founded in Dublin in 1999 by John Dunne and Tom Farrell and raised several million euro in funding during the high-tech boom.

Its investors included ICC Venture Capital, which is now part of Bank of Scotland (Ireland), British funder 3i and Enterprise Ireland. Fritzley said the firm had also received early stage funding from two ‘‘angel investors’’, including the company’s chairman Leonard Donnelly. Intune last year completed a share restructuring, which involved 3i selling its stake in the company to the other investors. According to its most recent accounts, Intune had revenue of just over €700,000 in 2005 and made a pre-tax loss of €1.3 million. At the end of 2005, the firm had accumulated losses of €6.9 million and shareholders’ funds of €318,459.