07 Feb 2020 | 3 min read
Ingenious today announces that its Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has invested as part of a $6m A-series investment round in TeraView, the pioneer and leader in terahertz technology and solutions.
The investment is designed to ensure that TeraView retains its leadership in the growing terahertz market and continues to provide a high level of support to each of its customers across the world while also accelerating product & technology development, customer support, and sales & marketing by the Company.
TeraView is the leading supplier of terahertz systems to support semiconductor companies and their manufacturing partners in the implementation of advanced 2.5 and 3D packaging technologies for integrated circuits.
Terahertz light lies between infra-red and microwaves, and as such has unique properties which enables it to pass through objects and to transmit images and compositional (spectroscopic) information that is ordinarily hidden. Terahertz is non-destructive, safe and fast, making it the ideal inspection and imaging modality for many applications across a range of industries. For example, advanced packaging techniques allow compact integration of key components such as microprocessors, high bandwidth memory and graphics processors used in computing and data manipulation, providing a means of enhancing performance and minimising power and space requirements in mobile phones and other electronic devices.
All of the major semiconductor companies are now offering their own packaging architectures to differentiate themselves from competitors. TeraView’s proprietary EOTPR technology has been developed with its key customers as an important enabling tool in fault isolation and inspection of these new architectures.
TeraView is also the leading supplier of terahertz systems for the measurement of thickness of multi-layer paints used in the automotive and aerospace industries. New painting technologies such as wet-on-wet formulations are being implemented to improve automotive production line throughput.
Guy Ranawake, Senior Investment Director at Ingenious, commented: “The unique properties of terahertz light combined with the fact that it is non-destructive, safe and fast, make it the ideal inspection and imaging modality for a variety of applications across a range of industries. TeraView is the world’s first and leading company solely focused on this area and has demonstrated the potential of its proprietary technology through its team of dedicated engineers leading to it having the largest number of terahertz systems in the field. We are very happy to support TeraView and look forward to seeing the growth of the company which aligns strongly with our investment strategy and infrastructure sector focus.”
Dr Don Arnone, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of TeraView, commented: “The follow-on investment from Nordson DAGE, coupled with new corporate investors such as Wonik Investments in Korea, underscore the level of interest from industry in TeraView’s technology and solutions that we provide to our customers in our core markets. Support from new financial investors such as Ingenious in London, and Pathfinder H in Korea further demonstrate the global appeal of TeraView’s business to investors.”
The transaction was led by Ingenious’ infrastructure division and represents the fifth investment from the Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service, following the backing of 3D Repo the cloud-based digital platform design pioneers, Winnow, the technology company behind Winnow Vision, the artificial intelligence tool helping chefs cut food waste in half, Over-C, an analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market and Reactive Technologies, a world leading technology platform facilitating the transition to a low carbon future.