UCL Spin-out Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies Secures £7m for its innovative non-volatile memory technology

Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies, the next-generation memory technology company, has secured £7m in new funding to support the expansion of its engineering team to bring its product to market. The company has already received seed funding from UCLB, UCL Technology Fund and IP Group for its cutting-edge research. 

Based on over 10 years of research at UCL, Intrinsic has developed an innovative approach to non-volatile memory using resistive random-access memory (RRAM) that can read data up to 100x faster and write it 1000x faster than existing solutions. It allows the integration of fast, cheap and very low power memory on the same chip as the processors enabling vastly greater artificial intelligence capabilities using significantly less energy compared to other RRAM solutions. Being fully CMOS compliant will also make it easier and cost effective for foundries to integrate the technology within existing chip manufacturing facilities. All of these will allow data hungry applications to overcome the memory bottleneck caused by current external flash memory, delivering dramatically higher performance at a much lower energy consumption.

Intrinsic sees many opportunities to integrate its technology with applications and devices that operate autonomously or remotely, ranging from driverless vehicles, robots in manufacturing, farming and warehouses to consumer applications around the home. As its technology offers higher performance at lower cost and energy consumption, it will make it practical to store and process data locally, meaning enhanced privacy. Data will no longer need to be stored or processed in the cloud, which is also good for those applications operating remotely where connectivity blind spots may be an issue.  

Mark Dickinson, CEO, Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies, said:

We believe RRAM has the potential to become the backbone for the next generation of edge and IoT computers at a time when data hungry intelligent applications are becoming more and more prevalent. Companies want to integrate more intelligence into self-contained applications and devices so that they can operate autonomously but this requires a paradigm shift in how memory is employed in these environments. By focussing on simplicity and manufacturability in our approach to RRAM we will open up a whole new array of market opportunities and this funding will play a critical role in helping us to attract highly skilled engineers to build out the commercial potential of Intrinsic.

 

David Grimm, Investment Director UCL Technology Fund commented:

Intrinsic is developing a great example of fundamental innovation with world-changing potential from UCL. The team now has the resources to prove the technology at cutting-edge node sizes across millions of devices. We’re very proud of this team and delighted to continue to back them!

About UCL Technology Fund

The UCL Technology Fund is dedicated to investing in intellectual property commercialisation opportunities arising from UCL’s world-class research base, focusing in particular on the physical and life sciences. The Fund supports UCL in achieving the full potential of innovations that have prospects for outstanding societal and market impact, right through the development journey from initial proof of concept to practical commercial application. The Fund is managed by Albion Capital in collaboration with UCL Business. For further information please visit: www.ucltf.co.uk