SiliconCatalyst.UK Call for Applications to the 2nd Cohort of the ChipStart UK Incubator
The application deadline For the 2nd cohort was April 19th, 2024
Applications ARE NOW CLOSED
The deadline for applications to the second cohort of the ChipStart UK programme has now passed. However, if you would be interested in applying for possible future cohorts, please use the application form above and just enter your company name and contact information and we’ll make sure you are kept informed.
London, UK – February 22nd, 2024 – SiliconCatalyst.UK, the UK arm of the world's only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating semiconductor solutions, is pleased to announce that the ChipStart UK incubator for early-stage UK semiconductor startups is now open for its next round of applications. ChipStart UK is backed by the UK Government to provide early-stage semiconductor companies with the technical and commercial help they need to help bring new products to market. Following on from the successful first cohort launch in 2023, the second cohort of selected startup companies will start their nine-month incubation on June 1st 2024.
The £1.3m programme is delivered by Silicon Catalyst.UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Catalyst LLC, the world’s most experienced start-up accelerator, who have engaged globally with hundreds of entrepreneurial teams targeting the semiconductor industry. The first cohort of eleven semiconductor startups are currently halfway through their nine-month incubation, gaining access to bespoke chip design tools, commercial expertise and specialised mentorship from semiconductor industry veterans, and networking opportunities with prospective investors and commercial partners.
Minister Saqib Bhatti, Minister for Tech and Digital Economy said:
“Semiconductors underpin our economy, national security and modern way of life, and are vital to our position as a science and tech superpower. That’s why our ambitious £1bn Semiconductor Strategy is designed to grow our semiconductor sector, secure our supply chains and protect national security. SiliconCatalyst.UK is helping us to deliver exactly that. Since launching the world’s first and only incubator for semiconductor design start-ups, they have helped UK firms attract close to £7m of additional investment, creating high-value jobs and training the next generation of UK chip business leaders.”
Semiconductor startup applicants accepted into the ChipStart UK incubator will get access to electronic design tools, design IP functional blocks, semiconductor foundry prototyping, packaging and test capabilities, at either no cost or significantly discounted, through the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem. Each ChipStart UK startup is assigned a dedicated Mentor, selected from the Silicon Catalyst advisor base for their relevance to the startup, who will work with the startup over the nine-month incubation period. The Mentors will help guide the startup teams through the semiconductor industry-specific training, held 3 times per month, and then help workshop these learnings to their startup’s specific needs. The intensive and valuable training is geared to create the next generation of semiconductor business leaders for the UK.
“The first call for ChipStart UK applications last year attracted 27 high quality semiconductor startups from across the UK. To be eligible they must have raised less than £1m of private funding. We are now reaching deep into the UK semiconductor research and innovation base for the second cohort”, said Sean Redmond, Managing Partner of Silicon Catalyst UK Ltd, “The chosen few will have a fast track to success into the global semiconductor supply chain”. Applications are now being accepted with the on-line form here. The application deadline is midnight April 19th, 2024.
Testament to the success of the programme are the glowing remarks from these ChipStart UK companies in Cohort #1:
Dorian Haci, CEO and co-founder of MintNeuro (a spin-out from Imperial College, London) says, “access to multiple licenses of Electronic Design Automation tools at no cost and free prototype runs with TSMC, the leading foundry in the world, is accelerating our go to market plan. The training, advice and support from some of the best semiconductor experts in the world today is significantly mitigating our risks to deliver our high quality implantable medical devices for neural stimulation of the brain much faster than we thought possible. This fully funded UK Government ChipStart UK incubation, delivered by SiliconCatalyst.UK, is providing a clear path to our initial seed investment. It is providing demonstrable risk reduction in every aspect of our business plan.”
Vaire is the first chip company in the world to deliver on the promise of near zero energy AI compute. “We have made connections into the global semiconductor industry that would have been near impossible without the help of SiliconCatalyst.UK delivering this fantastic ChipStart UK incubation programme”, said Rodolfo Rosini, CEO and co-founder.
Helen Duncan, Chief Marketing Officer, for BlueShift Memory said “The training and advice we have received from the Silicon Catalyst ecosystem has helped us sharpen our value proposition and go to market strategy. Putting us on the ChipStart UK stage has enabled us to attract the right investors at the right time, and we believe it has provided a springboard for our future success.”
Tanya Mangoma, CEO and founder of HyperCIM said “to have a founder of Arm, Jamie Urquhart, as our ChipStart UK personal Mentor is gold dust. We are absolutely delighted to be one of the chosen few to be allowed to drink from the fire hydrant of global semiconductor opportunity that SiliconCatalyst.UK is pouring into us with this fabulous fully UK Government funded incubator”.
James Lewis, CEO of RED Semiconductor, said “winning a coveted place on the ChipStart UK semiconductor startup incubator delivered by SiliconCatalyst.UK has been pivotal for our go to market strategy. The semiconductor industry specific deep dive training has refined our business plan. The global market leading customers and partner opportunities that Silicon Catalyst has delivered to us are game changing.”
“The Silicon Catalyst ecosystem delivered through the superb ChipStart UK semiconductor startup incubator has been of immense support during our spin-out process from Edinburgh University,” said CEO and co-founder of Singular Photonics, Shahida Imani. “Their In-Kind Partners have provided free EDA tools and access to advanced TSMC foundry runs. Their advisers have built mutual respect and trust up and down the supply chains that we need to build our business in, and their deep knowledge and advice has been seminal to attract our first pre-seed investment.”
ChipStart UK Companies
Managed by SiliconCatalyst.UK
We develop light-speed photonic processors and network switches that enable faster, more sustainable computing.
Using photons for computation leverages their high speed and high bandwidth to deliver faster data transfer rates and capacity vs. electronic processors and electro-optical switches.
In addition to being faster, photons require less energy than electrons. Finchetto’s photonic processor and network switch deliver faster throughput for significantly less energy.
By taking a radically different approach, Finchetto’s processor can compute natively in any numerical base. This enables the encoding of more and/ or specific information delivering faster data transfer rates.
We have designed the fastest, most sensitive Single Photon Avalanche Detectors (SPADs) in the world that can operate at ambient temperature and be manufactured in a standard CMOS process.
We are having an immediate impact on the sensors used in Raman Spectroscopy, Fluorescence Imaging and Flow Cytometry, and are working hard to unlock huge opportunities in handheld and wearable personal healthcare, high throughput screening of genomics and proteomics and biomedical applications at the GP surgery and pharmacy.
Removing the energy constraint, enabling truly powerful and explainable intelligence on any device.
The next era of energy-efficient AI hardware will be powered by Mignon.
By offering a unique technology stack for inference and training at the edge, our mission is to make AI a universally accessible tool.
Currently, AI gets overlooked in extremely constrained environments where energy efficiency and deterministic behaviour are vital.
Mignon’s cutting-edge coprocessor solves this with a fundamentally different approach rooted in logic-based intelligence.
SECQAI’s (se-kai’s) Q-Locked solution secures computation and communication which are the two domains with the largest threats.
Our solution solves both the running of secure applications that aren't liable to memory injection attacks and integrating communication between devices with a communication standard that is secure against quantum computing and won't break when deployed.
Vaire Computing is addressing the problem of scaling computing power beyond the thermal limits that threaten the end of Moore's law by developing near-zero energy chips based on a reversible computing architecture.
We are tackling the problem of low yield in compound semiconductor fabrications with our ground-breaking hyperspectral imaging technology combines high throughput and accuracy, delivering 100% wafer inspection in minutes.
Blueshift Memory’s proprietary chip design optimizes the memory architecture for more efficient handling of large data sets and time-critical data, enabling up to 1,000 times faster memory access for specific data-focused applications. These include high performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI), machine vision for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), 5G edge connectivity and the Internet of Things (IoT). The focus of Blueshift Memory’s technology is the Cambridge Architecture™, the next-generation technology for stored-program machines, designed to replace the currently-used modified Harvard architecture and to overcome the traditional constraints of the von Neumann bottleneck.
RED has invented the VISC processor (Vector+RISC), achieving massive execution efficiency for Edge AI and other applications.
It enables advanced security software, answering the no.1 pain point for Edge AI.
It delivers up to 100X the efficiency of today’s solutions, answering the no.2 pain point: performance requirements.
Its low bandwidth architecture makes it inherently low-power: the no.3 pain point.
Smart design means it’s no harder to get applications running on VISC than a traditional RISC processor. Binaries are smaller, and we work with standard compilers.
Integrated photonics uses the same scalable process used to make semiconductor electronics chips to make circuits for light. It’s being used as the platform for energy-efficient communications, wearable healthcare sensors, rapid diagnostic tools, optical tensor processors, on-chip lidar, quantum computing and communication, and a host of other transformative technologies.
Wave Photonics is using computational techniques to create tools and IP to enable and accelerate the development, mass production and adoption of these technologies. We believe that many obstacles integrated photonics technologies face can be removed using a combination of simulation, statistical modelling and optimisation techniques, so we’re creating and testing a new way to approach photonics design.
We’re located in Cambridge, UK, and are backed by great investors in Silicon Valley including Plug and Play Ventures, as well as Cambridge Enterprise and a range of US and European angel investors. We’re also leading multiple projects funded by Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency, to apply our approach to advancing quantum technologies.
If you want to find out more, or if you’re as excited as we are about the world-changing technologies that will be enabled by integrated photonics and want to play a part in it, then please get in touch via our website.
We are pioneering the use of semiconductor technology for next-generation neural implants.
Our mission is to provide the best possible outcomes for patients with neurological conditions by delivering the highest performance with the least invasive surgery.a
Our team brings together world-class experts in neuroscience, microtechnology, and implantable neural interfaces — augmented with medtech industry pedigree and clinical experience.
We are addressing the Power-Performance issues of petabyte-scale data processing problems by unifying compute and memory with a 100% enterprise software compatible low-energy processor in memory.