Dublin startup raises $14 million for movies-on-mobiles

Movidia was founded in 2006 by CEO Sean Mitchell, CTO David Moloney and COO Paul Costigan. The company’s R&D and sales teams are located in Dublin, Hong Kong and Romania.

The money is being provided by a syndicate led by Celtic House Venture Partners and Capital-E and including Emertec Gestion, AIB Seed Capital Fund and Enterprise Ireland. Movidia’s first mobile video processor has been take to silicon and is set to launch early in 2009, the company said.

The processor is being optimized for the creation of audio and video clips by users on a mobile phone and other consumer electronics equipment. Users will be able to do complex in-clip editing to add post-production effects such as slow motion and super resolution zoom to their own video content in real time and on the move without the need for a PC.

"Mobile social networking capabilities will be an important differentiator for next generation mobile handsets and Movidia's semiconductor products will provide handset manufacturers with unique video post-production capabilities that are now in demand by today's consumers," said Mitchell, in a statement.

Prior to founding Movidia Mitchell had spent time with Silicon & Software Systems Ltd. before joining Parthus Technologies. Mitchell then worked for Silansys Technologies until the company was purchased by Frontier Silicon where he was the director of product marketing until November of 2006.

Movidia's board of directors will be expanded as a result of the investment with Roger Maggs and Brian Antonen of Celtic House, Rudi Severijns of Capital-E and Jean-Philippe Gendre of Emertec Gestion joining the board.