Startup Funding: October 2021


Semiconductor manufacturing and packaging companies caught the attention of investors last month, with funding going to a middle-end-of-line foundry, flexible electronics manufacturer, and fab management software. Two Israeli startups are approaching AI accelerators in very different ways, while battery startups propose a variety of new chemistries in the search for the ideal electric vehicle b... » read more

Startup Funding: December 2020


AI hardware startups were hot in our December startup-funding focus, with two companies landing rounds exceeding $100M and plenty of others seeing investment. Two Chinese EDA companies received funding in a bid to boost the country's semiconductor ecosystem. One company providing control systems for fabs achieved $8M in Series A, and both autonomous driving and electric vehicles pulled in lots ... » read more

Over $7 Billion Raised In Mega-Rounds By 27 Firms


It was also a good month for private equity firms and venture capitalists to raise their own rounds, with the money to be invested in early-stage companies and more mature ventures. A semiconductor company led the month. Nexperia, once the Standard Products business unit of NXP Semiconductors, took in $1.5 billion of senior credit facilities. The money will go toward refinancing debt and par... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Auto


Cybersecurity Jens (Atom) Steube, a cybersecurity researcher and creator of the Hashcat password cracking tool, was probing for vulnerabilities in the new WPA3 security standard for Wi-Fi routers. WPA3 presents a robust defense against hacking, yet Steube discovered a security flaw in routers using WPA/WPA2 – one that leaves Wi-Fi passwords enabled with Pairwise Master Key Identifiers vulner... » read more

The Week In Review: IoT


Connectivity M1 Limited of Singapore worked with Nokia to launch a nationwide narrowband Internet of Things network, targeting such applications as asset tracking, environmental monitoring, fleet management, and smart energy management for buildings. M1 hopes to boost the IoT ecosystem in Singapore with the new NB-IoT network. M&A DuPont has agreed to acquire Granular, a provider of digita... » read more