23 April 2007
RapidMind Secures $10 Million in Venture Capital Financing

Ramps up Development, Sales and Marketing Efforts in the GPU and Cell BE arena and Accelerates Support for Multi-Core CPU Processors

WATERLOO, Ontario, April 23 -- RapidMind Inc., makers of the award-winning RapidMind Development Platform, today announced it has closed $10 million of venture capital funding, led by Ventures West Capital Ltd. Also participating in this financing is EdgeStone Capital Partners and existing investor BDC Venture Capital. RapidMind will use the funding to solidify its leadership position by delivering the industry’s most sought after software development platform for applications running on multi-core and stream processors. This new investment will be used to grow RapidMind’s sales organization to meet rapidly increasing customer demand and to drive aggressive marketing efforts to expand its customer base in the high performance computing and enterprise markets.

"RapidMind is leading the charge to solve one of the technology industry’s biggest and most complex challenges," said Ray DePaul, President and CEO of RapidMind. "Ventures West, BDC and EdgeStone offer us the vision and experience we need to remain at the forefront of this global opportunity."

Software performance has traditionally benefited from the increasing clock speed of processors but additional speed gains are now limited by the laws of physics. In response, processor vendors have now focused on putting multiple cores on each processor to achieve increased performance. Traditionally, harvesting performance from these additional cores requires programmers to use complex parallel programming tools and methodologies specific to each vendor’s processor architecture. With RapidMind, software developers can use standard C++ programming to easily create high-performance applications that leverage the full performance of GPUs, the Cell Broadband Engine or multi-core CPUs without porting or any architecture specific knowledge.

"If programmers can’t adapt to multi-core programming, 2007 will be the year that Moore’s Law stopped driving four decades of technology innovation," said Robin Axon, Partner at Ventures West. "These are the kinds of watershed events that venture capitalists live for. Add to the mix a market driven company leveraging years of academic research to elegantly solve this industry-wide problem, and stars align. You just have to be a part of it."

"RapidMind has made tremendous progress since our first investment last year. I am very proud of the existing team and their innovation and execution abilities which allowed us to attract this new round of investment," said Victor Scutaru of BDC Venture Capital, Technology Seed Investments, the first investor in Rapid Mind at the seed stage.

Robin Axon of Ventures West, John Kemp-Welch of BDC Venture Capital and Laura Lenz of EdgeStone Capital Partners join RapidMind’s board of directors. Duncan Hill, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Think Dynamics (acquired by IBM in 2003), remains an independent board member. President and CEO, Ray DePaul, and Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Michael McCool also remain on the board.

About RapidMind

RapidMind provides a software development platform that allows software vendors to deliver high performance on multi-core and stream processors, including the GPU and the Cell BE. Without sacrificing development simplicity, RapidMind-enabled applications experience a dramatic leap in performance. For more information on RapidMind, visit http://www.rapidmind.net.

About Ventures West

Ventures West Capital Ltd., a private venture capital investment group, is one of Canada’s leading investors in early stage technology companies. Since its founding in 1968, Ventures West has formed eight venture capital funds which total over $700 million and has invested in more than 150 companies. Ventures West has the people, the expertise, and the capital to help entrepreneurs develop emerging technology companies into market leaders. For more information, visit www.ventureswest.com.

About EdgeStone Capital Partners

EdgeStone Capital Partners is one of Canada's leading private equity firms and has managed in excess of $2.5 billion of private capital on behalf of institutional and high net worth clients. EdgeStone provides capital, strategic direction and business and financial advice to help promising early-stage and mid-market companies achieve their full potential. EdgeStone leverages the resources of its broad business network and ensures an alignment of interests to achieve superior returns for all stakeholders. For more information, visit www.edgestone.com.

About BDC Venture Capital

BDC Venture Capital is a major venture capital investor in Canada, active at every stage of a company's development cycle, from seed through expansion. Its focus is on technology-based businesses with high growth potential that are positioned to become dominant players in their markets. Established in 1975, BDC Venture Capital has invested in over 400 firms to date. It currently manages some $550 million in venture capital investments in the life sciences, telecommunications, information technology, and advanced technology sectors, as well as investments in funds.