iReady to Go

Is that a "For Sale" or a "Going Out of Business" sign in iReady Corp.'s
window?

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based TCP offload engine (TOE) company is on the verge of being bought or folded, Byte and Switch has learned. Sources say iReady executives are negotiating with suitors looking to pick up the assets. One source close to the company says several offers are on the table,” while other industry insiders wonder if iReady is worth the trouble.

One thing is clear: iReady cannot survive as it stands. The company lost more than $11.2 million for the fiscal year ended September 2003, and it lost more than $21 million the previous year. At the end of September, iReady had $870,867 cash on hand, total assets of $1.72 million, and nearly $12 million in liabilities.

The firm's financials were made public in an SEC report filed last month by National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: NSM), which owns 16 percent of the company and is a technology partner. Other investors include Canaan Partners, Crescendo Ventures, Crown Advisors, Goldman Sachs & Co., and Jafco Ventures (see IReady Is on Its TOEs and IReady Gets $19M, Names COO). National Semiconductor’s Ethernet MAC and PHY chips are used in iReady’s EthernetMax platform of semiconductors that support IPSec and iSCSI.

The SEC report made it clear that iReady needed to raise more funding to survive. In the same vein, company officials told Byte and Switch last May they were looking for an additional $15 million in the fall (see Is iReady?). The funding never came, and iReady secured a $3.6 million bridge loan from National Semiconductor in December 2003.