News: Suppliers
23 August 2023
Comptek secures €8m in Series A funding round
Comptek Solutions Oy of Turku, Finland (which specializes in III-V compound semiconductor quantum surface engineering) has closed its Series A funding round, consisting of an €8m equity investment with the participation of a key strategic partner in the consumer electronics industry, the Horizon Europe European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, and Italian venture capital firm LIFTT S.p.A., which is focused on early-stage investments in startups and SMEs with high growth impact and ESG.
Complementing the €2.45m grant awarded in 2022 by the EIC Accelerator, the involvement of the new investor group should provide support in areas such as scale-up growth, advancing its technological innovation progress, and accelerating the pace of industrialization and implementation of its technology for next-generation applications in optoelectronics and power electronics.
The Series A funding round extends beyond the inaugural seed-funding efforts, which oversaw the firm’s technology development and execution of its business model and market-entry strategy worldwide.
Founded in 2017 by chief technology officer Jouko Lång and chief executive officer Vicente Calvo Alonso, Comptek Solutions was spun out of the University of Turku, where its core technology Kontrox was developed by Lång together with other material scientists and semiconductor engineering researchers who constitute the firm’s core R&D team to-date. Kontrox tackles the problem of native oxidation in compound semiconductors, enabling improvements in the power efficiency of semiconductor components and optimizing their manufacturing processes.
Picture: Comptek Solutions' founders CTO Jouko Lång (left) and CEO Vicente Calvo Alonso (right).
“Comptek Solutions has proven to be a leading innovator in the rapidly growing market for compound semiconductor devices with the unique passivation technology they have,” comments EIC Fund board chair Svetoslava Georgieva. “We are pleased to support Comptek’s journey as they bring disruptive solutions to fill the gap in the market on a global scale. Their technology can be instrumental in faster adoption of crucial technologies such as 5G/6G communications, AR/VR, mobility, IoT, and quantum computing,” she adds.
“Passivation is an essential factor of advanced optoelectronic chip manufacturing, and Comptek Solutions is a key driver in this crucial niche,” comments LIFTT’s project manager Pierluigi Freni. “Their solution disrupts the value chain by introducing a novel processing technology that enables unprecedented levels of chip efficiency and helps to significantly reduce production costs,” he adds.
“Closing this investment round is a very important stepstone in our path towards wider market entry and scale-up of the company,” says Vicente Calvo Alonso. “In these first years, despite limited resources, we have made crucial developments to validate our technology and its fit into important semiconductor applications such as optoelectronics and power electronics. Thanks to our commitment to continued R&D excellence and creating value for customers through our technology and innovation, we have generated a solid customer base and are now set to roll out our first full turnkey solutions for passivation of edge-emitting lasers using the company’s proprietary passivation technique and custom-built equipment,” he adds. “With the proceeds from this recent financing round, we will accelerate the growth of our team and technology portfolio to provide the most efficient passivation solutions for other core fields of applications such as power electronics, where key European manufacturers have already committed to collaborating with us.”
Riber and Comptek partner to commercialize Kontrox technology
Comptek raises €450,000 for Kontrox technology to passivate oxidized III-V surfaces
