California-based electronic materials startup Thintronics Inc. closes its series A extension. The startup that supplies high-performance insulators for emerging AI data center, networking and RF/millimeter-wave (mmW) applications, adds M Ventures, the CVC arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and TGVP, the US CVC arm of TOPPAN Holdings. Previous investors Tallwood Venture Capital also participated in this series A syndicate. The series was led by Maverick Capital and Translink Capital.
Thintronics was founded in 2019 on the idea that conventional assumptions guiding insulator material development limited the capacity of the industry to innovate. The company have since developed a suite of high-performance materials that display electrical and mechanical characteristics that far outpace the state of the art. Thintronics’ CEO Stefan Pastine points out that “the interconnect insulator is foundational to modern electronics; however, it has yet to be optimized to operate near the theoretical limit of insulation. Additionally, the supply chain is fragmented across multiple electronic architectures. It is our vision to optimize the insulator and unify it across the fabric.”
The company’s insulators remain stable at high frequencies using a new generation of isotropic, skew-free, ultra-low loss, and low Dk dielectric materials. They can be applied as ultra-thin coatings directly onto chips and interconnects. The coatings act as an advanced insulation layer, minimizing signal loss and energy dissipation in high-speed data channels. Benefits include significant reductions in data center energy loss from electromagnetic radiation and heat dissipation. A further benefit results from Thintronics moving away from the need for fiber glass to provide structural rigidity for PCBs, allowing new levels of flexibility for high performance boards and semiconductors.
The addition of M Ventures, TGVP and Tallwood delivers significant strategic advantages for Thintronics. M Ventures brings an important partnership with Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, one of the leading semiconductor materials providers in the market and a global player in science, technology and manufacturing worldwide. TGVP brings Thintronics into TOPPAN’s ecosystem. TOPPAN is a leading global supplier of semiconductor packaging materials and a significant user of insulator materials for the sector. Along with Tallwood, a California based long-term semiconductor investor and an early Thintronics funder, the addition of these partners provides the company with important strategic intelligence into its target markets and significant technical and innovation resources that can accelerate and compliment their commercialization efforts.
According to TGVP’s Issei Kusano, Thintronics “achieves outstanding electronic and mechanical properties. TOPPAN’s semiconductor back-end business has the potential to unlock and expand the value of Thintronics. As this collaboration comes to fruition, it is expected to revolutionize the packaging market.”
M Ventures’ Owen Lozman expressed confidence in Thintronics technology emphasizing that “the timing couldn’t be better for Thintronics at the very moment when data and compute demand at scale has run up against technical obstacles. Only material innovation can address these fundamental challenges, and we are proud to support this vision of disruptive breakthrough at the core of modern electronics.”
Thintronics’ CEO Stefan Pastine added that “It is incredibly exciting to have additional support with deep expertise and strategic insights in semiconductor materials and semiconductor packaging. I would like to thank Daniel Franke, Owen Lozman, Yuhei Yano, Ed L., and Yoji Kawaguchi for believing in our vision, our Team and our Technology.”
Tristan El Bouayadi, Thintronics’ CTO, underlined the value of these new partnerships to the company when “the market has a real need for simpler integration schemes with higher performance requirements (in terms of Signal Integrity, Power Integrity and Thermomechanical Reliability). Harnessing the networking effect from semiconductor material suppliers to packaging Fabs and OSAT will enable Thintronics to make this a reality. Practically speaking, Thintronics will act as an ecosystem enabler for architectures such as Interposer-less 2.1D, Chiplets and Heterogeneous Co-packaging. This investment aligns perfectly with our technical and commercial roadmap.”
