(Montbonnot, France, and Singapore, 31 May 2022) UnitySC, the leading provider of metrology and inspection equipment for the semiconductor industry, today announces a successful EUR 48 million funding round led by Jolt Capital, the French State through French Tech Souveraineté (a program operated by Bpifrance) and Supernova Invest.
Driven by sectors like automotive, IoT or communication devices, demand for electronic chips is rising sharply, both in volumes and performances. Measurements and inspection of wafers at every step of the manufacturing process are becoming ever more critical to ensure minimal rates of failure and increase yield. Advanced packaging, such as three-dimensional integrated circuits (3DIC), one of the current key drivers for semiconductors performance, can require over 1000 fabrication steps, each one a vector of potential failure. With cascading defects, the overall yield can dramatically plummet, making high-speed quality control the best insurance and an ideal way to save energy and reduce costs.
UnitySC is already an essential reference at many wafer manufacturers and IC foundries, with hundreds of machines installed and a leading position in the field of 3DIC metrology. Beside advanced packaging measuring, UnitySC offers a full range of equipment dedicated to other types of high-end processes, most notably in patterned and un-patterned defect inspection for compound semiconductors, transparent substrate or specialty devices (MEMS and power, automotive, RF).
Headquartered in France, UnitySC has a global footprint with subsidiaries in Germany, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China, and USA. With a broad and growing portfolio of over 150 active patents, the company benefits from decisive technology advantages that offer competitive edge in the areas of improved throughput, higher sensitivity, or the ability to measure on both sides of wafers.
With 70% growth since 2020 and a YoY doubling of revenue expected for 2022, UnitySC is scaling 3 times faster than the global market of semiconductor capital equipment. Bookings also continue to demonstrate a very healthy trend.
UnitySC’s EUR 48 million financing round is led by Jolt Capital, the French State through French Tech Souveraineté, a program led by the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI) and operated by Bpifrance, and Supernova Invest who will join historical and majority shareholder Fogale Nanotech on the board of directors. These new financial resources will expand and accelerate UnitySC’s growth initiatives, and will be used to finance working capital, a new ambitious R&D program, new subsidiaries openings in China and Korea, new manufacturing capabilities and a demo lab in Asia. The funding will enable UnitySC to further establish its leadership in the growing market of semiconductor metrology and inspection equipment, expected to pass the EUR 5 billon mark by 2024.
Quotes
“In the past 2 years, despite the global supply chain challenges, our team has demonstrated its ability to scale market adoption and improve profitability. Demand for compound semiconductors and advanced packaging is booming, which strengthens UnitySC’s market positioning by our differentiated metrology and inspection solutions. This significant new round of funding, led by a series of professional investors well accustomed to the challenges of scaling deep tech, will allow us to turn the company into an unshakable leader of next-gen IC chips’ quality control,” says Dan Lee, Chief Executive Officer of UnitySC.
“At Jolt Capital we particularly like companies like UnitySC, with a unique and protected solution, based on hard engineering, requiring complex manufacturing steps, addressing B2B markets that are pervasive but little-known at the same time. We’ve been following UnitySC since its creation as a spin-off of Fogale, and we also played a direct role in the consolidating acquisitions made in 2016 and 2018. We are thrilled by the giant steps UnitySC has made since then and delighted to have gathered the French public investment bank Bpifrance and our deeptech peers at Supernova Invest to continue writing the successful story of UnitySC and turning them into a giant of semicon capital equipment,” comments Pierre Garnier, Managing Partner at Jolt Capital.
”We are happy to support UnitySC, a leading French actor in the semiconductor sector”, adds Maud Henrotte, Investor at Bpifrance. “Through world-recognized technologies, UnitySC has demonstrated its unique capacity for innovation in support of this industry.”
“We have identified UnitySC as one of the promising high-growth companies targeted by our new Supernova Ambition Industrie fund dedicated to the scale-up phase of industrial deeptech. A reference player in one of the sectors we know best and like most, microelectronics, UnitySC has reached a major inflection point and has started an impressive commercial and industrial growth. We are pleased to participate in the financing of this phase and to accompany the company and its seasoned management team.” comments Régis Saleur, founder and managing partner of Supernova Invest.
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