Porotech secures $20m Series A investment
Funding to accelerate global expansion and mass production of unique micro-LED products
UK start-up Porotech has secured $20 million Series A investment to accelerate expansion and mass production of its micro-LED products. The funding is designed to ensure the company keeps pace with growing demand from customers and partners in the $140 billion display market.
A multinational electronics company is among the participants in the Series A funding round, which has been led by Ameba Capital and includes previous investor Speedinvest.
Porotech, a spin-out from the Cambridge Centre for GaN at the University of Cambridge, has created a new porous GaN semiconductor material, which it callsPoroGaN. This technology is enabling the company's micro-LED products to deliver monochrome and full-colour displays on a single InGaN material system, with the brightness, efficiency and resolution required for high-quality image projection against bright backgrounds – even outdoors in daylight. The company says that its red micro-LED product is already achieving best-in-class performance.
Micro-LED displays will play a vital role in the next generation of TVs, wearables and smartphones. And GaN-based material technology is widely seen as the only technology that can deliver displays bright and efficient enough to meet the requirements of extended reality (XR) displays involving virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and/or mixed reality (MR).
Until now, the requirement to mix multiple material systems has complicated the manufacture of full-colour micro-LED displays – making the final products prohibitively expensive for mass-market applications. Porotech’s use of a single material system is a significant leap forward that opens the door to mass manufacturing of micro-LED displays.
"Porotech's progress during its seed phase has been absolutely staggering – both technically and commercially," said Porotech CEO and co-founder Tongtong Zhu (pictured above). “We have delivered the world’s first InGaN-based red micro-LEDs and displays and have set up production of our first products – shipping to some of the biggest global names in display technology.
"This latest funding will accelerate our work to ensure that PoroGaN drives the commercialisation of XR glasses and the new wave of user interface innovation. It will help us to continue our expansion plans to meet demand and to continue to provide world-class service and products to our rapidly expanding customer and partner base.”
Arthur Chen, a partner at Ameba Capital, said: "Porotech is poised to transform the $140 billion global display market as it accelerates mass production of its revolutionary micro-LED products. The fact that it already has industry leaders among its clients and partners is a testament to the game-changing potential of Porotech's breakthrough."
