UK based wireless chip manufacturer Icera is planning an IPO in the next 12 months, with an estimated market cap of £618 million ( €688 million).
The founders of Icera Stan Boland and Simon Knowles are experienced in taking start-ups to the next level, having previously founded Element 14, a chip company that was sold to Broadcom for $594 million in 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom.
Icera customers include Orange, Vodafone, AT&T and Japan's Softbank which all use Icera chips in mobile broadband "dongles".
The chips are also contained in dongles made by Nokia and in Plastic Logic's eReader, to be launched this month.
CEO Boland said "we want to build a company worth $10 billion to $15 billion in the next few years."
Icera has been strongly supported by the European VC community having raised $205 million to date over six funding rounds. Stakeholders include Amadeus Capital Partners, Atlas Ventures, Balderton Capital, Accel Partners and Advent.
The float on the London stock exchange would be the first semiconductor IPO since bluetooth chip company CSR went public in 2004.