Startup Funding: January 2024

By Jesse Allen - 07 Feb, 2024 - Comments: 0

Big rounds marked January, with three companies raising over $100 million. Quantum computing topped the list, with the company that resulted from the merger of Cambridge Quantum Computing and Honeywell's quantum division raking in the third-largest round for a quantum computing company ever. Another chart-topper was an advanced packaging company that began mass production in its first factor... » read more

Startup Funding: December 2023

By Jesse Allen - 10 Jan, 2024 - Comments: 0

Photonics and optics were strong in December, with investors funding two different companies using photonic technologies to develop AI chips and interconnects. Another key area — metaoptics — combines what traditionally would be separate lenses and optical components into a single, flat nanopatterned device. Metaoptics are being deployed in applications ranging from AI processing and sensor... » read more

Startup Funding: September 2023

By Jesse Allen - 09 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 0

Chip-to-chip and data center I/O drew investor interest in September, including support for several startups developing Compute Express Link (CXL) solutions. Elsewhere in the data center, several large rounds went to companies developing AI accelerators. And at the edge, startups are building unique ways to handle AI at very little power by initially processing data directly at the sensor. O... » read more

Startup Funding: August 2023

By Jesse Allen - 13 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

August startup funding continued to follow the trends that put AI and autonomous driving at the top of funding. One of August's largest rounds went to a company designing AI processor IP that can scale from the edge to the cloud. Plus, three battery manufacturers brought in one billion dollars or more. This report covers 37 companies that collectively raised $4.2 billion in August 2023. [... » read more

Startup Funding: May 2023

By Jesse Allen - 07 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

Photonic interconnects were an area of activity in May, with two companies raising funds for what could be much faster chip-to-chip and chiplet-to-chiplet links. Microstructured optics and metasurfaces also drew investment, with four companies creating products for a range of applications from flexible LEDs to multi-wavelength spectral imaging. The large language models that power many gener... » read more

Startup Funding: February 2023

By Jesse Allen - 08 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

The cost of borrowing is going up, but investors continued to pour money into the chip industry in February. Collectively, 132 companies raised more than $4.5 billion last month. One of the big beneficiaries was quantum computing, with nine companies drawing a total of more than $500 million. The bulk of that went to a quantum software and services company spun out of Alphabet, but plenty wa... » read more

Startup Funding: November 2022

By Jesse Allen - 07 Dec, 2022 - Comments: 0

November was a month for mega-rounds, with ten companies receiving investments of at least $100 million. One of those is a startup providing connectivity solutions for data centers and enabling use of the memory pooling functionality in the latest update to the CXL standard. Two quantum computer startups were part of the $100M+ club this month — one using very cold atoms to take on not only q... » read more

Startup Funding: October 2022

By Jesse Allen - 02 Nov, 2022 - Comments: 1

Investors poured $3.5 billion into 113 startup companies in October 2022, especially new battery technology, AI hardware, and faster memory access. Battery technology dominated the fundraising in October thanks to the U.S. Department of Energy and four funding rounds that exceeded $200M. The DOE awarded sizeable grants to help 20 companies, including six startups, build out battery material ... » read more

CogniFiber: Photonic Computing

By Zoya Hasan - 03 Aug, 2022 - Comments: 0

Computing with light has many advantages. It's fast, cheap, and it doesn't generate much heat. But it's also difficult to make it work, and it has a number of challenges that are specific to photonics. CogniFiber, an Israeli startup, says it has solved many of these issues. The company uses photonics over fiber, and it has introduced a glass-based chip. “We use light as a data conveyor ... » read more

Startup Funding: June 2022

By Jesse Allen - 06 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

Big money went to manufacturing in June, with a massive round for a Chinese analog foundry’s expansion to 55 – 40nm nodes. A fab management software startup also drew sizeable investment, as did a supplier of semiconductor-grade silicon components. Investors didn’t forget chip design, with three EDA companies receiving new funding, one of which drew over $100 million. Plus, numerous te... » read more

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