Cambridge-based PragmatIC Semiconductor is in an ambitious mood as it has secured $80 million (£58.2 million) in Series C funding.
It seems the chips aren’t down, they’re up. The firm says the investment will be used to build a second FlexLogIC fab in the North East of England, to “meet the growing demand for ultra-low-cost flexible integrated circuits (FlexICs) for the Internet of Everything”.
Scott White, CEO of PragmatIC Semiconductor, says: “Our FlexLogIC-002 fab will deliver significantly higher capacity than our first line, whilst still maintaining our signature ultra-low capex, fast production cycle time and minimal carbon footprint. In addition to supporting our continued commercial ramp, it provides a template for rolling out a distributed global network of FlexLogIC systems, offering a Fab as a Service (FaaS) for dedicated production on major customer sites to enable efficient and secure semiconductor supply chains.”
Erik Langaker, independent Chair of the Board, adds that the team will “more than double in size over the next 12 months and expand capacity to fulfil the rapidly growing demand for electronics in everyday objects”.
PragmatIC explains that its development over the past few years has seen the launch of its flagship ConnectIC product line of RFID FlexICs, as well as its FlexIC Foundry service for designers to create products.
This year it has improved compute capability for non-silicon chips by producing flexible microprocessors. These include its 6502 and PlasticArm, an Arm Cortex-M0 based system-on-a-chip.
PlasticArm is the result of “many years of collaboration” between the two companies, and the love-in is set to continue as Arm participated in this funding round.
“Billions of everyday objects could benefit from being part of the Internet of Things, but to continue to scale sustainably we need to explore new approaches for embedding intelligence into everyday objects,” comments Dipesh Patel, CTO at Arm. “Flexible electronics can extend the range and scope of what is possible today and we see massive potential for it to be creatively adopted by the Arm ecosystem, leading to innovation with global impact.”
PragmatIC was founded in 2010. On LinkedIn it has 95 employees listed, and is currently recruiting for more engineers and specialists.
According to Crunchbase, prior to today’s (18 October) announcement, PragmatIC had raised a total of $65.9 million (£48 million) in funding over six rounds.
