They were having a gala time at August Capital’s annual bash yesterday. I did not get to go, what with pesky deadlines and all that. It must have been quite a party, because August got a visit from Santa Claus in September. Earlier this week, Qualcomm bought one of August’s protfolio companies, Iridigm Display Corp for a whopping $170 million …. in cash! I was chatting with Vivek Mehra…. what a fine gentleman who knows a thing or two about hardware, and he said, “Iridigm has come up with a display (technology) for mobile handhelds. With more people watching stuff on mobile device, it is a hard market to crack… but lucrative.” He urged I meet with them. Well now one will have to do the tango with Qualcomm flacks to meet with these guys.

Iridigm was headed in multiple directions, Qualcomm suggested, but “we really wanted to focus them hard on the handset market,” said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, an executive vice president at the wireless communications concern, according to Venture Wire Professional. Qualcomm already had a roughly 14% stake in the company from previous investments. Iridigm, founded in 1996 by two researchers with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a number of investors, among them Intel Capital, Gabriel Venture Partners, DynaFund Ventures, Steamboat Ventures and VentureTech Alliance.