Date: 11/11/2009

GigOptix has acquired fables mixed signal IC supplier ChipX

GigOptix has announced that the company has signed a definitive agreement, and completed the acquisition of ChipX, Incorporated, a privately held fabless supplier of analog and mixed signal custom Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) on November 9, 2009.

"I am delighted with the strategic match we have found in ChipX which continues our vision of bringing complementary technologies together to increase value for our customers so that we can accelerate our growth engine and continue to enrich the features we offer while reducing the cost to our customers," stated Dr. Avi Katz, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of GigOptix. "ChipX brings a loyal portfolio of tier one customers who use the first class design services and IP of ChipX to create their own truly differentiated custom products. Similarly, we will bring our own IP together with that of ChipX to bring new standard products to market faster, and at a lower investment by leveraging their excellent design capability. This acquisition fits into our continuous rollup and consolidation growth strategy and will support continuous improvement of all our financial and business metrics. I am excited to welcome the new team and look forward to working together to continue to deliver excellent results for our shareholders."

The benefits listed by GigOptix include: increased revenue, more customers, broader product portfolio.

Increased presence in the Defense and Instrumentation market, which is supported by ChipX's ITAR certification and the addition of ChipX's subsidiary in Haifa, Israel, which is ideally located to facilitate support expansion of GigOptix' product sales to the defense market there and around the world.
GigaOptix says, With the acquisition, GigOptix brings high volume silicon design expertise into the company to complement its design excellence in the more specialist semiconductor technologies of III-V, Silicon germanium and of course its unique expertise in Electro-Optic (EO) polymer technology. This will support its strategic move into higher levels of integration of analog and mixed signal system-on-chip products, such as Clock Data Recovery (CDR) and Serializer/De-Serializers (SERDES). Similar to the acquisition of Helix Semiconductors in January 2008, the acquisition supports GigOptix's plan to efficiently expand its product portfolio into high volume optically connected markets such as consumer electronics, data centers, high performance computing as well as significantly reducing the time and cost of developing new products, customer relationships and vertical markets. The transaction also delivers increased scale with an existing revenue stream from complementary product sales.

"This is a welcome and exciting move for the ChipX team," commented Ophir Nadir, Vice President of Engineering at ChipX. "The combination of standard products and custom ASICs is an effective model in many successful semiconductor companies due to the ability to leverage the valuable customer channel and investment in IP across a larger number of products. It makes sense to add new intellectual properties to the custom ASIC tool kit from the GigOptix product base. ChipX has a healthy pipeline of new customer designs ongoing and expects to see growth in ASIC sales in 2010. The ChipX team is eager to work with everyone in the GigOptix corporate family to create additional new growth opportunities with this synergistic merger."

The terms of the deal provide for the ChipX investors to receive approximately 3.5 million common shares, representing approximately 26% of the fully diluted share count of GigOptix.

Dr. Avi Katz will continue as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board. The current GigOptix Management Team will continue to lead the combined company, and the new ChipX (CX) Product Line will be jointly managed, ad-interim, by Ophir Nadir, Vice President Engineering of CX Product Line, and Elie Massabki, Vice President Sales & Marketing of CX Product Line.

For more details visit www.GigOptix.com