Startup Funding: October 2023


Investors are betting heavily on data center technology, with October funding going to companies developing data processing units (DPUs) to accelerate a variety of tasks, a near-memory distributed dataflow architecture for AI, and liquid cooling technology. Much of this is linked to the build-out of the edge, closer to the source of the data than the cloud but not as compute-intensive. Other ... » read more

Startup Funding: April 2023


Packaging was a hot spot in April, with one of the largest rounds going to a middle-end-of-line advanced packaging company. A second packaging company also drew significant funding for its focus on wafer-level packaging for CMOS image sensors. Two packaging substrate manufacturers also saw investment. Two photoresist makers also drew sizeable rounds. Both they and the packaging companies are... » read more

Startup Funding: February 2023


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: January 2023


Quantum computing had a good month in January, collectively raising over $240 million. A significant chunk of that went to a full-stack quantum company whose processers use neutral atoms manipulated by optical tweezers. Other companies funded this month are developing trapped ion processors, photonics-based processors, and quantum memories, which will be essential for quantum networking. Two co... » read more

Startup Funding: October 2022


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

Startup Funding: April 2022


Silicon photonics holds the potential to vastly increase bandwidth in chips and systems while reducing power use — and investors are taking note. In April, one of the largest funding rounds went to a startup developing chip-to-chip optical I/O. But that wasn't all. Photonics funding showed up in AI with a photonic Tensor core, in room-temperature quantum computing, and, of course, in lidar an... » read more

Startup Funding: January 2022


China's startups are the star of the month once again, with more companies based or co-headquartered in the country receiving funding in January 2022 than the rest of the world combined. Exact investment figures for Chinese startups are frequently not reported, but based on minimum amounts given, they raised more than the rest of the world as well. The largest round of the month went to a co... » read more

Startup Funding: February 2021


In February, several startups emerge from stealth, with one company working on AI inference architectures for the data center and another trying to make lenses thinner by patterning surfaces with tiny structures. Two new Chinese companies are trying to expand the country's semiconductor design ecosystem with GPUs and interface IP. Plus, a maker of AI chips for ADAS draws another massive round t... » read more

October ’19 Startup Funding: Mega Harvest


Seventeen startups took in mega-rounds of $100 million or more during October, with a cumulative total of just over $3.2 billion. Cybersecurity startups continued to be popular with private investors during the month of October, with 15 financing rounds. Twenty automotive and mobility technology firms picked up new investments. Analytics firms, artificial intelligence/machine learning techno... » read more

Week in Review: IoT, Security, Autos


Products/Services Rambus reports completing the sale of its Payments and Ticketing businesses to Visa for $75 million in cash. “With 30 years of experience pushing the envelope in semiconductor design, we look toward a future of continued innovation to carry on our mission of making data faster and safer,” Rambus President and CEO Luc Seraphin said in a statement. “Completing this transa... » read more

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