Comptek secures €8M funding for III-V passivation technology
Finnish firm to accelerate growth in new technology for optoelectronic and power applications
Comptek Solutions, a provider of turnkey passivation solutions for III-V semiconductor devices, has closed its Series A funding round of an €8M equity investment with the participation of a key strategic partner in the consumer electronics industry, the Horizon Europe EIC Fund and LIFTT, a leading Italian venture capital firm.
This latest milestone, compliments a €2.45 million grant awarded in 2022 by the EIC Accelerator. The involvement of this investor group will provide Comptek with further support in areas such as scale-up growth, advancing its technological innovation progress, and accelerating the pace of industrialisation and implementation of its technology for next-generation applications in optoelectronics and power electronics.
The company, founded in June 2017 by CTO Jouko Lång and CEO Vicente Calvo Alonso (pictured above), was spun out of the University of Turku, Finland, where its core technology, Kontrox, was developed by Jouko together with other material scientists and semiconductor engineering researchers who constitute the company’s core R&D team to-date.
Kontrox tackles the problem of native oxidation in compound semiconductors enabling considerable improvements in the power efficiency of semiconductor components and optimising their manufacturing processes.
Svetoslava Georgieva, chair of the EIC Fund Board, remarked: “Comptek Solutions has proven to be a leading innovator in the rapidly growing market for compound semiconductor devices with the unique passivation technology they have. We are pleased to support Comptek’s journey as they bring disruptive solutions to fill the gap in the market on a global scale. Their technology can be instrumental in faster adoption of crucial technologies such as 5G/6G communications, AR/VR, mobility, IoT, and quantum computing.”
Pierluigi Freni, project manager of LIFTT, said: “Passivation is an essential factor of advanced optoelectronic chip manufacturing and Comptek Solutions is a key driver in this crucial niche. Their solution disrupts the value chain by introducing a novel processing technology that enables unprecedented levels of chip efficiency and helps to significantly reduce production costs. We are thrilled by the promising outlook their game-changing technologies present to the global compound semiconductor market and are therefore pleased to have the opportunity of investing in this passivation-specialised tech-innovator.”
Vicente Calvo Alonso, CEO and co founder of Comptek Solutions, said: “Closing this investment round is a very important stepstone in our path towards wider market entry and scale-up of the company. In these first years, despite limited resources, we have made crucial developments to validate our technology and its fit into important semiconductor applications such as optoelectronics and power electronics. Thanks to our commitment to continued R&D excellence and creating value for customers through our technology and innovation, we have generated a solid customer base and are now set to roll out our first full turnkey solutions for passivation of edge emitting lasers using the company’s proprietary passivation technique and custom-built equipment.
“With the proceeds from this recent financing round, we will accelerate the growth of our team and technology portfolio to provide the most efficient passivation solutions for other core fields of applications, such as power electronics where key European manufacturers have already committed to collaborating with us.”
