EE Times Silicon 60: 2016's Emerging
Companies to Watch
Version 17.1 of Silicon 60
Peter Clarke
9/19/2016 01:00 PM EDT
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It has been a year since EE Times produced a version16.1 of the
Silicon 60. Over that time while the global economic situation can —
at best — be said to have stabilized the semiconductor and
electronics industries are on the edge of "great expectations."
There seems no doubt that the Internet of Things will have a
revolutionary impact on how people can live their lives, but exactly
how that will manifest itself in terms of components, software,
platforms, legal and business models, is not yet clear nor is the next
big thing.
Drones for everything from window cleaning to delivering parcels and
autonomous driving are examples of what could be about to impact
us. Sales revenue of associated components and software will be
enormous — but not this year. The result being a semiconductor
market that is expected to decline in 2016 as it did in 2015. That is
unprecedented in the absence of a general economic catastrophe —
the global chip market did fall in 2008 and 2009 according to WSTS,
but for obvious reasons.
Entrepreneurs are not daunted by the comings and goings of
economic indices or industry consolidation but are greatly excited by
the opportunities afforded by turning points in technology. So as
usual there is no shortage of startup companies coming through to be
considered for admission to the Silicon 60.
We can even discern a tentative return of venture capital to hardware
startups. However, it should be noted that with the fast pace of
system-level change we are experiencing is forcing more startups to
pivot at some point to try and intersect with a viable market.
EE Times has selected 25 startup companies to come on to version
17.0 of its list of 60 firms that we feel are worth keeping an eye on.
Some are more mature than others and may be lucky enough to start
seeing the market coming towards them.
EE Times has been updating and publishing the Silicon 60 since April
2004 to reflect the latest corporate, commercial, technology and
market conditions. The latest batch of newcomers include companies
active in materials, MEMS sensors and actuators, displays, machine
learning, networking, EDA, image sensing, wireless power, openhardware and memory.
To make way for the newcomers, 25 companies have dropped off the
list. Some of those were acquired including: Cambridge CMOS
Sensors, MagnaCom and Soft Kinetic. Others have simply become
mature with the passage of time. Those more mature companies,
while no longer listed on the Silicon 60, may yet fulfil an investors'
dream of moving to public ownership or going through a high-priced
company sale.
The selection of the 60 companies in Silicon 60 v17.0 is based on the
consideration of a mix of criteria including: technology, intended
market, financial position and investment profile, maturity and
executive leadership. They are emerging companies to follow — for a
variety of reasons. The names of the companies brought on to the
Silicon 60 at this iteration are highlighted in red in the listing below.
Readers are welcome to nominate their own emerging companies for
inclusion in a future iteration of the Silicon 60list. Nominations should
be supported by a short citation providing basic details about the
company and explaining why the company is suitable for inclusion on
the list. Click here to submit your nomination.
Aledia SA (Grenoble, France), has developed a method of forming
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on vertical pillars of gallium-nitride grown
on silicon wafers. The company span out of CEA-Leti in 2011 and
claims the technique produces three times more light per planar area
than conventional approaches while using less GaN material. In the
last year the company has received backing from automotive supplier
Valeo and furnishings supplier Ikea. www.aledia.com
Ambiq Micro Inc. (Austin, Texas) founded in 2010, is a fabless chip
company developing low power microcontrollers and mixed-signal
systems that operate at sub-threshold voltages. Investors include
ARM Holdings and Kleiner Perkins Caufield
Byers www.ambiqmicro.com
Anacode Labs Inc. (Aptos, Calif.), founded in 2015 by signal
compression expert Al Wegener, has a mission to provide
compression hardware and software under an IP licensing business
model for use in data storage and communications applications.
Wegener previously founded and exited Samplify
Systems. www.anacodelabs.com
Arctic Sand Technologies Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.), founded in
2010 as an MIT spin-off, is working on power conversion circuits for
high-efficiency power management applications. It has developed
power conversion chips using switched-capacitor techniques that are
10 times smaller and 75 percent more efficient that traditional
conversion systems, according to investor Arsenal Venture Partners.
Strategic investors include Dialog Semiconductor plc and Murata
Manufacturing Co. Ltd. www.arcticsand.com
Aspinity Inc. (Morgantown, West Virginia) founded in June 2012 by
Vinod Kulathumani an associate professor at West Virginia
University, is developing reconfigurable analog signal processing
circuits as ICs and IP. By extracting application-relevant
characteristics prior to digitizing sensor data, Aspinity claims it can
reduce the overall power and cost required in applications such as
voice control, health monitoring, and industrial vibration
monitoring. www.aspinity.com
Astrapi Corp. (Dallas, Texas), founded in 2009, is the pioneer of
spiral-based signal modulation, which provides novel ways to build
symbol waveforms used to encode digital wireless transmission.
Astrapi claims it is able to improve the trade-off between the four
fundamental parameters in telecommunications: bandwidth, signal
power, data throughput, and error rate. The company claims the
resulting efficiency translates into higher spectral performance with
more bits available at a lower cost. www.astrapi-corp.com
Autotalks Ltd. (Kfar Netter, Israel), a fabless startup founded in
2008, has developed chipset and software that combine signal
processing, security and positioning information to create vehicle-tovehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications for
automotive OEMs and their suppliers. www.auto-talks.com
Baikal Electronics JSC (Moscow, Russia), founded in 2012 is a
fabless semiconductor company specializing in ARM- and MIPSbased processors and systems on a chip (SoC). The Baikal family of
multicore processors includes SoCs for desktops and industrial
computers with various levels of performance and functionality. The
company is backed by Russian supercomputer firm T-Platforms and
sovereign investment fund Rusnano. www.baikalelectronics.ru
Barefoot Networks Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.), a microprocessor startup
founded in 2013 that has attracted $130 million in funding from
strategic backers that include Google, Goldman Sachs and HewlettPackard Enterprise. Its Tofino chips are aimed at making the
programming complex networks as easy as writing C++ code in an
emerging open-source language it helped create called P4.
www.barefootnetworks.com
Blue Danube Systems Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), founded in May
2013, is a fabless chip company that reckons it can boost the
capacity of LTE wireless communications by supporting more sectors
around a basestation. The company has raised about $23 million and
the CEO is Mark Pinto a former vice president and fellow of Bell Labs
and executive vice president of Applied Materials.
www.bluedanube.com
BrainChip Inc. (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) is developing spiking neural
networking cores for licensing to semiconductor partners. Founded in
December 2013 but now owned by BrainChip Holdings Ltd. which is
listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. www.brainchipinc.com
Brite Semiconductor (Shanghai) Corp. (Shanghai, China) was
founded in 2008 and is located at Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park. It is an
SoC and ASIC design company that pulls together intellectual
property, foundry, test and packaging technologies to create custom
silicon for its customers. Brite is backed by local foundry
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. www.britesemi.com
Chirp Microsystems Inc. (Albany, Calif.) was founded in 2013 to
commercialize a low-power ultrasonic gesture recognition technology
intended for use in mobile and wearable devices. Developed by a
team of researchers from BSAC (Berkeley Sensor and Actuator
Center) and SwarmLAB at UC Berkeley and UC Davis, Chirp uses
MEMS ultrasound transducers to detect and track a user's gestures
in 3D space www.chirpmicro.com
Chronocam AS (Paris, France) is a startup company founded in
2014 that develops machine vision sensors and systems based on
asynchronous pixel sensor technology. The novel architecture
creates an image sensor that is closer to a biological model and a
method of reporting image changes reduces off-chip bandwidth
requirements and system power consumption. Chronocam has
received seed investment from Robert Bosch Venture Capital and
CEA Investissement. www.chronocam.com
Credo Semiconductor Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) is a self-funded private
fabless company founded in 2008 by three engineering veterans that
had worked in Silicon Valley. Credo is focused on high-speed mixedsignal ICs and IP targeting the data center and enterprise networking
markets. The company’s SerDes include designs that have been
implemented in 28nm and 16nm FinFET processes.
www.credosemi.com
Cricket Semiconductor Pvt. Ltd. (Bengaluru, India), founded in
2014, aims to establish India's first high-volume, globally competitive
production wafer fab focused on analog and power technologies. The
company has signed a memorandum of understanding with the state
of Madhya Pradesh and has plans to locate the fab on an industrial
park on the outskirts of the city of Indore.
www.cricketsemiconductor.com
Crossbar Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) is a 2010 spin-off from University
of Michigan that has developed a resistive random access memory
(ReRAM) based on the movement of silver ions through amorphous
silicon to form a filamentary structure. The company is aiming to
produce multi-layered stand-alone terabyte memory die as well as
integrating the technology in standard CMOS logic to provide
embedded non-volatile memory. www.crossbar-inc.com
Dispelix Oy (Haukipudas, Finland), founded in 2015, has developed
special gratings and optical waveguides that can route an image from
a display engine located in the frame of smart spectacles, directly to
the wearer's retina. The company researchers have dealt with several
issues typically associated with optical grating approach, namely
rainbow effects and pattern artefacts due to transmissive diffraction.
www.dispelix.com
Dyna Image Corp. (New Taipei City, Taiwan) formed as a spin off
from Lite-On Semiconductor in 2013. Develops and sells optical and
inertial sensors, hybrid sensors and sensor fusion software.
www.dyna-image.com
Flex Logix Technologies Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) is a startup
founded to bring a field-programmable gate array architecture to
market as a licensable fabric for inclusion in system chips. Founded
in March 2014 and supported by Lux Capital soon afterward.
www.flex-logix.com
Gowin Semiconductor Corp. (Foshan, Guangdong, China),was
founded in 2013 to develop FPGAs and is backed by Chinese
investors. The Series A round target was to raise 500 million RMB
(about US$82 million). The R&D team is based in Shanghai, Jinan
and Foshan. The company has launched two families of FPGAs, one
being non-volatile. Gowin has a wholly-owned subsidiary, Melody
Semiconductor LLC, in Silicon Valley whose main tasks are market
research, customer project management and consulting.
www.gowinsemi.com.cn
Indie Semiconductor trading name of AyDeeKay LLC (Aliso Viejo,
Calif.) designs and manufactures customized integrated circuits
making use of multi-die packaging to offer custom microcontrollers.
The company was founded in 2007 and is profitable with about 50
employees. www.indiesemi.com
Ineda Systems Pvt. Ltd. (Hyderabad, India), a fabless chip company
founded in 2010, is developing MIPS-architecture wearable and IoT
processors and has announced funding by Samsung, Qualcomm and
Imagination Technologies Group plc amongst others. The company
has a design win in Samsung's Artik-1 board intended for use in
sensor hubs and wireless beacons. www.inedasystems.com
Innovium Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), founded in December 2014 by
former executives of Broadcom and Cavium, is focused on
developing semiconductor solutions for Ethernet networking and has
assembled an executive team with prior experience at leading
companies including Broadcom, Cavium, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, Intel
and Juniper. The company raised more than $50 million in 2015
www.innovium.com
Intento Design SA (Paris, France), an EDA company founded in
spring 2015 by Farakh Javid, chief technology officer, provides
analog and mixed-signal circuits as IP that can automatically scaled
for performance and migrated between manufacturing processes.
www.intento-design.com
Intrinsic-ID BV (Eindhoven, The Netherlands) was founded in 2008
as a spin-off from Royal Philips Electronics and provides hardwareintrinsic security technology – also referred to as a Physical
Unclonable Function or PUF. The technology derives cryptographic
keys based on the specific silicon implementation and how that
affects nominally metastable structures, which could be considered a
silicon fingerprint. Security is enhanced as no key is stored and there
is nothing to find in the power-down state. www.intrinsic-id.com
Kandou Bus SA (Lausanne, Switzerland) is a chip-to-chip SerDes
developer that claims its technology delivers two to four times the
bandwidth of traditional differential signalling at half the power
consumption and is hopeful that is Chord signalling will find use in
applications from smartphone SoCs to servers and high performance
computing. The company, founded in 2011, has received an
investment of $15 million from Bessemer Venture Partners.
www.kandou.com
Kateeva Inc. (Newark, Calif.), a 2008 startup founded to manufacture
and supply production equipment for organic light emitting diode
(OLED) displays, is developing an inkjet-based printing method to
allow the mass production of large-scale, flexible OLED displays that
will also be low-cost the company claims. The firm is backed by
investors that include: Applied Materials, DBL Investors, Madrone
Capital Partners, Musea Ventures, New Science Ventures, Sigma
Partners, Spark Capital, and Veeco. www.kateeva.com
Keyssa Inc. (Campbell, Calif.) has raised $47 million from Intel,
Samsung and others to develop a wireless 'connector' that transmits
data at up to 6Gbits per second. The interconnect technology is
called "Kiss Connectivity" and it uses 60GHz wireless transceiver
modules in close proximity to transmit data at up to 6-Gbits per
second. Gary McCormack, who serves the company as CTO, cofounded the company as Waveconnex Inc. in 2009. www.keyssa.com
Kyulux Inc.(Fukuoka, Japan)is developing organic light emitting
diode (OLED) technology for use in displays and lighting industries
based on research conducted at Kyushu University. One of Kyulux’s
cofounders is Prof. Chihaya Adachi, the inventor of thermallyactivated delayed fluorescence (TADF) technology. The company's
CEO is serial entrepreneur, scientist, licensed attorney and inventor
Christopher Savoie. The company has received $13.5 million in
backing from Samsung Ventures.www.kyulux.com
mCube Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) was founded in September 2009 and
has developed a method for integrating MEMS motion sensors above
electronic circuitry in a standard CMOS wafer fab using through-
silicon via (TSV) connections. The process includes hermetic sealing
of the assembly. The company claims that this provides an
advantage in terms of sensor size that will help it with applications in
wearable equipment and the Internet of things. www.mcube-inc.com
NetSpeed Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) supplies on-chip network
IPs to SoC designers for markets from mobile to high-performance
computing and networking and developed through a system-level
approach and user-driven automation. Founded in 2011.
www.netspeedsystems.com
Nextinput Inc. (Atlanta, Georgia) founded in 2012 as a spin-off from
Georgia Tech to commercialize a force-sensitive touch technology
developed by CEO and co-founder Ian Campbell. The company
claims it can provide a tactile, force or pressure sensitive method of
interfacing with virtually any electronic device. Steve Nasiri, founder
of InvenSense, is on the board of directors, and Kurt Petersen serves
on a technical advisory board. www.nextinput.com
Nikola Labs LLC (Columbus, Ohio) was founded in October 2014 in
partnership with The Ohio State University, Ikove Venture Partners,
and Ohio State professors. Nikola Labs specializes in wireless power
solutions and radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting for mobile
devices. The company's energy harvesting system converts ambient
RF signals – such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and LTE — into usable DC
power suitable for sensors and devices. www.nikola.tech
Nxtsens Microsystems Inc. (Montreal, Canada) founded in 2015 is
designing temperature-compensated oscillators and other timing
circuits. Based on proprietary technology that allows for the
fabrication of resonators in a high-vacuum environment, Nxtsens
uses wafer-level packaging. www.nxtsens.com
PsiKick Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has developed a wireless sensor
networking SoC using an operating voltage down to 0.25V. PsiKick
was launched in 2012 based on the work of Benton Calhoun and
David Wentzloff conducted at the University of Virginia and the
University of Michigan in low-power digital and analog circuit design.
www.psikick.com
QST (Shanghai, China), founded in 2012, otherwise known as
Shanghai Quality Sensor Technology Corp. Ltd. has two eCompass
products; the QMC5983 and the QMC6983. Basd on a licensing of
Honeywell's anisotropic magnetoresistive (AMR) sensor technology
and is also working on gyroscopes. www.qstcorp.com
Quantum Materials Corp. (San Marcos, Texas), founded in 2008 is
a manufacturer of quantum dot materials and in particular of non
heavy metal quantum dots for use in liquid crystal displays and other
applications. www.qmcdots.com
Quanergy Systems Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), founded in 2012, is
developing solid-state photonic beam-steered lidar for use in assisted
and autonomous automobiles. It has a broad team experienced in
optics, photonics, optoelectronics, artificial intelligence software and
control systems. The company raised $90 million in a Series B round
of funding in 2016 that valued the company at more than $1 billion.
www.quanergy.com
Rockley Photonics Inc. (Pasedena, Calif.) was founded in August
2013 by a management team with experience in commercializing
silicon photonics and CMOS electronics. The company is integrating
photonics and control electronics to simplify network switch design.
Chairman and CEO, Andrew Rickman, previously founded Bookham
Technology in the UK and more recently served as chairman of
Kotura Inc. The company is establishing a fabless silicon photonics
business model and infrastructure. www.rockleyphotonics.com
Saigon Semiconductor Technology Inc. (Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam) designs and manufactures RF, microwave and millimeterwave semiconductors and offers gallium arsenide foundry services.
Founded in 2014 SSTI is building a wafer fab to house equipment
acquired from Universal Semiconductor Technology Inc. (Santa
Clara, Calif.). www.saigonsemi.com
Sensifree Ltd. (Cupertino, Calif.) was founded in 2012 and claims to
have developed a contact free, electromagnetic sensor that
accurately collect a range of continuous biometric data without the
need to touch the human body. The Sensifree technology uses RF
signal to sense movement in the radial artery wall to track heart rate,
and in the future blood pressure. Having taken the pulse digital signal
processing is used to extract more information. www.sensifree.com
SiFive Inc. (San Francisco, Calif.) was founded in 2015 by creators
of the free and open RISC-V processoe architecture as a reaction to
the end of conventional transistor scaling and escalating chip design
costs. SiFive's mission is to bring the power of open-source and agile
hardware design to the semiconductor industry. www.sifive.com
SigFox Wireless SAS (Toulouse, France) founded in 2009 is the
developer and operator of a cellular network in France dedicated to
low-throughput machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and the
Internet of Things. It makes use of ultranarrow band radio technology
and licenses operators in other countries including the United
Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.
www.sigfox.com
Sol Chip Ltd. (Haifa, Israel), founded in 2009, has developed a chip
scale photovoltaic energy harvester which can provide voltages at
between 0.75V and 9V useful for autonomous low-power electronic
systems. The PV cell can produce 3.3-milliwatts in full daylight and up
to 20-microwatts under office lighting. www.sol-chip.com
SolidEnergy Systems Corp. (Woburn, Mass.), founded in 2012 by
Qichao Hu during his postdoctoral work at MIT, has introduced the
“anode-free” lithium metal battery in 2014 with superior energy
density and safety but that can still made using existing Li-ion
factories. Applications include drones, watches and wearables,
smartphones, and electric cars. www.solidenergysystems.com
Spin Transfer Technologies Inc. (Boston, Mass.) was established
by Allied Minds and New York University in 2007 to develop and
commercialize its Orthogonal Spin Transfer magnetoresistive random
access memory technology, OST-MRAM. The technology, invented
by Professor Andrew Kent, is an innovation in the field of spintransfer-based MRAM devices. www.spintransfer.com
Standing Egg Co. Ltd. (Seoul, Korea) was founded in May 2013 and
develops MEMS sensor products including accelerometers,
gyroscopes, pressure sensors, and others. www.standing-egg.co.kr
Stratio Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.), founded in 2013, is developing lowcost germanium (Ge) based short wavelength infrared (SWIR) image
sensors suitable for use in mobile devices. Stratio’s sensor utilizes a
proprietary hybrid process that combines selective Ge epitaxial
growth with established Si CMOS technology to overcome the
limitations of conventional InGaAs-based SWIR sensors.
www.stratiotechnology.com
StoreDot Ltd. (Ramat Gan, Israel) was founded in 2011 to develop
products and technology around peptide—based organic quantum
dot materials. These nanometer-scale crystals have physical
dimensions so small that quantum mechanics affect the electro-optic
properties. The materials are tunable and the range of behaviors is
wide, offering potential applications in displays, non-volatile
memories, image sensors and batteries. www.store-dot.com
SureCore Ltd. (Sheffield, England) SureCore is a 2011 spin-off from
Glasgow University and is working on memory IP at 28nm and
smaller critical dimensions in FinFET and FDSOI processes
alongside simulation firm Gold Standard Simulations Ltd. www.surecore.com
Telink Semiconductor Co. Ltd. (Shanghai, China) is a fabless IC
company formed in 2010 and backed by Intel Capital in 2015. It
develops highly integrated low power radio-frequency and mixed
signal system chips for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Its
product portfolio includes low-power 2.4GHz RF SoCs for Bluetooth
Smart, Zigbee, 6LoWPAN/Thread, Homekit and low-power highprecision analog ICs for touch control, serving smart lighting, home
automation, smart city, and other consumer electronics. www.telinksemi.com
TeraDeep Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) founded in December 2013 as
spin off from Purdue University to focus on the design of mobile
coprocessors and neural network hardware for the understanding of
images and videos. www.teradeep.com
Ultrahaptics Ltd. (Bristol, England) founded in 2013, uses a compact
array of ultrasound transducers to send inaudible sound waves
through the air, using phase-shift techniques to control the focus and
intensity of the acoustic radiation pressure into haptic feedback.
www.ultrahaptics.com
USound GmbH (Graz, Austria) is fabless MEMS company that was
founded in 2014 with the mission of producing audio systems based
on MEMS actuators. USound is collaborating with Fraunhofer ISIT
(Institute for Silicon Technology Itzehoe Germany) to develop MEMS
speakers that enable higher system integration, smaller form factor at
lower cost with better hardware performance compared to the
existing electro-dynamic transducers. USound products can include
audio amplifiers, audio codecs and passive components and may be
suitable for smartphones and wireless in-ear systems.
www.usound.com
Vesper Technologies Inc. (Boston, Mass.), previously called BakerCalling and Sonify, is a University of Michigan startup founded in July
2009 to develop piezoelectric MEMS microphones and bring superior
microphones to handheld devices. The company claims its
piezoelectric MEMS sensing is to be able to reduce the noise-floor
compared with conventional capacitive sensing technology.
www.vespermems.com
V-Nova Ltd. (London, England) founded in 2011 by Guido Meardi
(CEO), Luca Rossato (chief scientist), Eric Achtmann (executive
chairman) and Pierdavide Marcolongo (angel investor), to create a
superior video codec. Perseus is the result and is being developed in
an open innovation model with a business consortium that includes
Broadcom, Encompass, Intel, Hitachi and Sky Italia. www.v-nova.com
Wavelens SA (Grenoble, France) is a CEA-Leti spinoff that was
launched in November 2012. The company focuses on developing
MEMS optical systems to integrate such functions as autofocus,
image stabilization and zoom. www.wavelens.com
Weebit Nano Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel), founded in 2014, has an R&D
agreement with Rice University (Houston, Texas) and has licensed 7
patents on the silicon oxide Resistive Random Access Memory
(ReRAM) technology being researched there by Professor James
Tour. A first commercial device is expected by mid-2017.
www.weebit-nano.com
WiTricity Corp. (Watertown, Mass.) was founded in 2007 to
commercialize technology developed by company founder Professor
Marin Soljacic to enable wireless power transfer over distance using
magnetic resonance in line with the A4WP Rezence specification. It is
licensing its technology for use in consumer electronics, automotive,
medical devices and defense. www.witricity.com