Black Semiconductor secures EUR 255 million in funding to launch new semiconductor technology in Europe

The German federal government and the State of North-Rhine-Westphalia commit EUR 229 million in funding over the next 7 years to drive new generation of chips from Black Semiconductor in Aachen, while the company has secured EUR 25.7 million in equity funding from Scania Growth Capital and other investors.

Set to transform the chip industry, a new generation of chip networks will solve connectivity barriers and multiply computing power and efficiency by several orders of magnitude. With the funding, Black Semiconductor is positioned to enable the first semiconductor mass production based on the novel material graphene—an important step towards developing the semiconductor value chain in Europe.

Black Semiconductor, a pioneer in next-generation chip technology, today announced the largest funding for a deep tech company manufacturing chips in Europe to date, strengthening Europe’s foothold in a strategically significant industry. The company has secured EUR 229 million public funding from both the German Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia over the next 7 years under the IPCEI program. Alongside the public funding, Black Semiconductor has secured an additional EUR 25.7 million in equity funding. The round included leading venture capital firms like Scania Growth Capital, Project A Ventures, Porsche Ventures, Capnamic, Tech Vision Fonds, and NRW Bank, joining the seed round investors Vsquared Ventures, Cambium Capital, and Hermann Hauser’s Onsight Ventures. With the funding, the company is on track to realize the first phase of its vision by 2031, advancing a new generation of chip technology from research to mass production.

Founded in 2020 by Dr. Daniel Schall and Sebastian Schall, Black Semiconductor is developing a new way to build networks of chips leveraging a novel material: graphene. These new chip networks will enable to speed up the data communication between chips for unparalleled performance, improved energy-efficiency, and reduced manufacturing cost. The company’s technology and hardware facilitate optical chip-to-chip connections, allowing countless chips to interact almost as if they were one. By overcoming current limitations in chip architecture, this new technology holds the potential to bring graphene from research labs to the industry for transformative applications across industries, including efficient data centers, generative and embedded AI, high-performance computing, and autonomous driving. With the fresh capital, Black Semiconductor will accelerate its R&D initiatives and establish pilot line manufacturing capabilities in Aachen, Germany. The company plans to inaugurate a pilot line manufacturing facility in Aachen by 2026.

Dr Daniel Schall, co-founder and CEO of Black Semiconductor, said: “We feel strongly supported with this outstanding funding from the government and renowned investors. This will enable us to focus at full speed on realizing our vision: resolving the connectivity barrier of chips. We create a new fabrication technology to build faster, more powerful, cost-efficient, and energy-efficient computation.”

Daniel Riazzoli, East Hill Equity Partner, said: “The technology developed by Black Semiconductor will be a key component of the automotive semiconductor of the future. An innovative photonic communication network will enable more advanced functionalities in next-generation autonomous and software-defined vehicles.”