Cornice adding space at HQ
Deal nearly doubles company's Longmont home
By Matt Branaugh, Camera Business Writer
July 21, 2004
LONGMONT — Cornice Inc., a storage device startup based in Longmont, recently signed a deal to nearly double the size of its headquarters.
The company, which occupies 22,106 square feet on the first floor of a building owned by Xilinx Inc. at 1951 S. Fordham St., agreed to fill up another 17,137 square feet on the building's second floor.
"We outgrew this space," said Kevin Magenis, the company's founder and chairman. "It was natural for us to expand upstairs."
Since its founding in 2000, the startup has raised $81 million in funding, including a $51 million round completed during first quarter of this year. It now employs 120 people.
Cornice's 1-inch-square storage products, which can hold between 1 and 2 gigabytes of data, are geared for consumer electronics gadgets, such as MP3 players and portable USB storage units for computers.
The privately held business declines to disclose shipment volumes or sales figures, but says it continues to win over the original equipment manufacturers that need storage features inside their products. Customers include RCA, Garmin, Samsung and iRiver.
Last month, competitors Seagate Technology and Western Digital filed separate lawsuits accusing Cornice of copying patents. Cornice won't comment on ongoing litigation.
The Colorado Group's Gary Aboussie represented Xilinx in the real estate deal. Nelson Miner with Prime Real Estate in Longmont represented Cornice.
Three years ago, Xilinx moved into a $32 million, 133,000-square-foot building directly south of the 200,000-square-foot building where Cornice operates.
After moving out, Xilinx listed a large portion of the building as available for lease, but the programmable chipmaker recently decided to remove all but 14,000 square feet from the market as it eyes its own future expansion, Aboussie said. With Cornice's commitment, only the 14,000 square feet remains empty, he said.
Contact Camera Business Writer Matt Branaugh at (303) 473-1363 or branaughm@dailycamera.com.
