New investment supports second FlexLogIC® fab to meet soaring demand for flexible chips
CAMBRIDGE, England — (BUSINESS WIRE) — October 18, 2021 — PragmatIC Semiconductor, a world leader in flexible electronics, is proud to announce that it has secured $80 million of Series C funding. This scale-up investment will be used to build a second FlexLogIC fab in the North East of England, to meet the growing demand for ultra-low-cost flexible integrated circuits (FlexICs) for the Internet of Everything, and strengthening the position of the UK in its ambition to be a leading designer and manufacturer of next generation semiconductors.
“This successful Series C round is a testament to the potential for our technology to enable trillions of smart items and address key UN sustainable development goals,” said Scott White, CEO of PragmatIC Semiconductor. “Our FlexLogIC-002 fab will deliver significantly higher capacity than our first line, whilst still maintaining our signature ultra-low capex, fast production cycle time and minimal carbon footprint. In addition to supporting our continued commercial ramp, it provides a template for rolling out a distributed global network of FlexLogIC systems, offering a Fab-as-a-Service (FaaS) for dedicated production on major customer sites to enable efficient and secure semiconductor supply chains.”
Erik Langaker, independent Chair of the Board, added: “This capital raise is a fantastic recognition of the achievements of Scott White, Richard Price and their team. The round has been subscribed by a highly qualified select group of industrial and individual investors with significant experience in the semiconductor industry. Their backing will enable the team to more than double in size over the next 12 months and expand capacity to fulfil the rapidly growing demand for electronics in everyday objects.
PragmatIC’s development over the past few years has seen the launch of its flagship ConnectIC® product line of ultra-low-cost RFID FlexICs, as well as its FlexIC Foundry® service enabling innovative designers to create more pioneering products and advance them rapidly from concept to reality. This year it has demonstrated an order-of-magnitude improvement in complexity and compute capability for non-silicon chips by producing flexible microprocessors. These include the iconic 6502 and PlasticArm, an ultra-minimalist Arm® Cortex®-M0 based system-on-a-chip which is 12 times more complex than previous state-of-the-art flexible electronics.
PlasticArm is the result of many years of collaboration between the two companies, a partnership that is set to continue long into the future with semiconductor IP leader Arm participating in this funding round.
“Billions of everyday objects could benefit from being part of the Internet of Things, but to continue to scale sustainably we need to explore new approaches for embedding intelligence into everyday objects,” said Dipesh Patel, chief technology officer at Arm. “Flexible electronics can extend the range and scope of what is possible today and we see massive potential for it to be creatively adopted by the Arm ecosystem, leading to innovation with global impact.”
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About PragmatIC Semiconductor
PragmatIC Semiconductor is a world leader in ultra-low-cost flexible electronics. Our unique technology platform enables innovators to create novel solutions to everyday problems that are beyond the scope of conventional electronics. Our ConnectIC® family of flexible integrated circuits (FlexICs) are thinner than a human hair and extend proven applications such as RFID and NFC into mass market use cases, enabling the potential for trillions of smart objects that can engage with consumers and their environments. Our novel, differentiated products are being adopted by a growing base of global companies across diverse markets, including consumer goods, games, retail, pharmaceutical and security. Alternatively, designers can create their own application-specific flexible devices using our FlexIC Foundry® offering at a fraction of the cost and time required for traditional silicon circuits, opening up multiple new markets beyond RFID. These FlexICs are manufactured on our revolutionary FlexLogIC® production system, a highly scalable manufacturing model for cost-effective high-volume production, achieved with orders of magnitude less capital investment and operating cost compared to a traditional silicon IC fab. PragmatIC is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with manufacturing operations in the North East. Shareholders include Cambridge Innovation Capital, Arm and Avery Dennison.
For more information please contact pr@pragmaticsemi.com
FlexIC Foundry information is available at https://www.pragmaticsemi.com/create-more/designs
High resolution images are available in our Press Kit at https://www.pragmaticsemi.com/presskit
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