Black Semiconductor has raised €254.4 million (about $273 million at today’s rates) through a combination of private and public finance.
The company’s CEO, Daniel Schall’ confirmed the fund is the firm is developing a chip-connecting technology based on graphene.
Graphene is a revolutionary material that Andre Geim and Konstantin Noselov discovered in 2010, to develop a new kind of chip-connecting technology.
According to the CEO, under the IPCEI ME/CT2 programme, the company has received €228.7 million in public funding over the next seven years from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
The German company has also acquired €25.7M in equity capital in addition to the public funding.
Porsche Ventures and Project A Ventures led the round, which also included investors from the seed round, Vsquared Ventures, Cambium Capital, and Hermann Hauser’s Onsight Ventures, as well as venture capital firms, corporations, and industry leaders like Scania Growth Capital, Capnamic, Tech Vision Fonds, and NRW.BANK.
Schall stated that the funds would be used for R&D, constructing a “pilot” production facility in Aachen, recruiting engineers and other staff (it currently employs a meagre 30 people), and refining commercial growth.
“We highly value the strong support of the government and renowned investors to jointly advance the development of novel technologies in Europe.
The investment enables us to drive our product development and 300 mm wafer pilot production facility forward at full speed,” Dr. Schall said.
This amount is among the most raised by a European startup operating in the semiconductor industry to date.
Patrick Huke, Partner and Head of Porsche Ventures added: “Our lead investment in Black Semiconductor together with Project A represents a great opportunity, harnessing photonics technology seamlessly integrated into conventional chips for a variety of industries, use cases and future AI applications.
We earlier reported that a few weeks after the US announced cancelling some licences that allow companies to send products, including chips to Chinese company, Huawei Technologies, in its latest efforts to curb China’s tech power, American multinational corporation, Nvidia, has reportedly dropped the price of its most advanced AI processors.
