12. June 2024
This is a crucial milestone in our journey at Black Semiconductor. In our Series A, we’ve secured EUR 254.4 million in funding, marking one of the largest funding rounds for a deep tech company manufacturing chips in Europe to date. This substantial investment underscores our dedication to strengthening Europe’s foothold in this strategically significant industry.
Our journey at Black Semiconductor is being fueled by a strategic blend of public and equity funding. This approach is not only significant to our growth but also serves as a model for the wider semiconductor industry in Europe.
The EU’s initiative, embodied in the IPCEI ME/CT2 program, has a clear goal: to stimulate more equity funding in the semiconductor industry. The public funding is a commitment amounting to EUR 228.7 million, representing 70% of the total funding volume of our 7-year IPCEI project. This significant investment by the German federal government and the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia serves as a catalyst, triggering further equity investments into our project and the industry as a whole.
Our recent equity funding of EUR 25.7 million is just the beginning, marking the start of several funding series as part of this 7-year project. This first round was led by Porsche Ventures and Project A Ventures, with participation from leading venture capital firms, corporates, and industry leaders including Scania Growth Capital, Capnamic, Tech Vision Fonds, and NRW.BANK. Our seed round investors Vsquared Ventures, Cambium Capital, and Hermann Hauser’s Onsight Ventures joined the round again.
This balanced approach to funding underscores the crucial interdependence of public and private investment. It not only supports our mission at Black Semiconductor but also contributes to the broader goal of driving innovation and competitiveness in the European semiconductor industry.
We’re developing a new way to build networks of chips leveraging a novel material: graphene. Our new generation of chip networks will speed up data communication between chips, resulting in unparalleled performance, improved energy efficiency, and a significant reduction in manufacturing costs. Our technology and hardware enables optical chip-to-chip connections, allowing chips to interact almost as if they were one. By overcoming current limitations in silicon chip architecture, our new technology addresses existing barriers for transofmrative applications across industries, including efficient data centers, generative and embedded AI, and autonomous driving.
With this funding, we’re on track to realize the first phase of our vision: advancing a new generation of chip technology from research to mass production by 2031. We’re also committed to contributing to the semiconductor value chain in Europe and enhancing the continent’s technological sovereignty.
The capital injection will facilitate our product development, graphene production in Europe, and the creation of approximately 120 new high-tech jobs in Aachen, Germany, in the next 2 years. We plan to inaugurate a pilot manufacturing facility in Aachen by 2026, demonstrating the seamless integration of graphene into electronic chips.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) says about our funding milestone, “We admire Daniel and Sebastian’s unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible today, which aligns closely with AWS’ buidler mindset. AWS has helped more startups launch, build and succeed than any other cloud provider, and the commitment to continue to be that trusted partner remains strong as ever. This funding announcement is a testament to the technological ambition and demonstratd competence of the Black Semicondutor Team”.
Robert Habeck, Vice Chancellor of Germany and Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action acknowledges “Even faster chips are essential especially for artificial intelligence applications, and Black Semiconductor’s project is very promising. Courage and perseverence have paid off for the only start-up among a total of 31 IPCEI Microelectronics projects”.
Mona Neubaur, Deputy Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia and Minister for Economics, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy of North Rhine-Westphalia expresses her support “We are happy to support black Semiconductor in further developing a pioneering technology and bringing it to market maturity. The new type of data transmission will make chips more powerful and therefore more energy-efficient. A great team of founderes from Aachen and an excellent examle of the innovative strenght of our North Rhine-Westphalian start-up scene!”
Dr. Daniel Schall, co-founder and CEO of Black Semiconductor, said: “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. As traditional chip technology moves closer to its technological and economic limits, our innovation paves the way for faster, more powerful, cost-efficient, and energy-efficient computation. As part of the IPCEI program, we are committed to contributing to the semiconductor value chain in Europe. We believe that this investment, coupled with Europe’s ambitious push to increase funding for deep tech companies, will inspire even greater participation from startups and industry players.”
Uwe Horstmann, co-founder, and General Partner of Project A emphasizes: “Europe needs to focus on achieving independence in key enabling technologies to ensure the continent’s autonomy and economic stability amid geopolitical challenges and supply chain issues. Semiconductors have been a much-neglected industry. Black Semiconductor, with its great founding team, exceptional technological know-how and substantial funding, has the ability to bring back some of the much-needed technological sovereignty and become one of the key players in Europe.”
Patrick Huke, Partner and Head of Porsche Ventures: “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. Fueled by a combination of public and private investors, the Black Semiconductor team is now in a great position to build a strong semiconductor business within Europe, strengthening not only our domestic competitiveness but also the overall European chip ecosystem.”
We use graphene as enabler to create ultra-fast, energy-efficient, and scalable chip fabrics by connecting thousands of chips so they can interact as if they were one.
Black Semiconductor GmbH
Schloss-Rahe-Strasse 15
52072 Aachen
Germany
