3DGaN innovators Finwave Semiconductor today announced a $12.2 million Series A funding round.
The round was led by Fine Structure Ventures with additional participation from Citta Capital, Soitec, Safar Partners and Alumni Ventures.
The Series A follows an award of $4.3 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) SCALEUP (Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential) grant, to help bring the company’s technology to volume production.
The funds will be used to expand the company’s team, product development activities and lab facilities – all in advancement of Finwave’s mission to revolutionize the future of 5G communications with next-generation 3DGaN FinFET technology.
mmWave is critical to the future of all wireless technology, but the realisation of its potential faces severe roadblocks.
Weak uplink, high deployment costs, low 5G radio efficiency and soaring operating costs are all combining to thwart the promise of mmWave.
Currently, 5G networks are being held back from realizing their true potential due to a critical missing component: high-performance mmWave power amplifier technology.
High-performance GaN-on-Si brings a new option to the table that could make 5G millimeter wave more practical.
At mmWave frequencies, GaN-on-Si amplifiers excel versus alternative solutions such as Si RFSOI MOSFETs, GaAs pHEMTs, or SiGe devices.
Finwave’s 3DGaN technology significantly improves linearity, output power and efficiency in 5G mmWave systems – while greatly reducing costs for carriers. By leveraging high volume 8” Si CMOS fabs for producing 3DGaN chips, Finwave’s devices benefit from both the cost model and scalability of silicon technology.
“Having solved numerous manufacturing challenges and successfully created a fabrication process using standard 8” Si CMOS tools, Finwave is leading the way in commercializing the 3DGaN technology for 5G,” says founder and CEO Bin Lu.
More information can be found at www.finwavesemi.com.
