Swedish start-up Ascatron raises €4 million
Ascatron, a spin-out from the Swedish R&D institute Acreo, has completed A-round financing for the final development of its SiC power semiconductors for high voltage applications. The total of €4 million is shared between €3 million in equity capital, and €1 million in an innovation grant.
The investors are from Italy and China, including the four venture capital investors Quadrivio, Como Venture, Rise Leader Investment and InteBridge Technology, together with the equipment producer LPE. The grant comes from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) through KIC InnoEnergy. KIC supports innovation projects in the field of sustainable energy.
"We have started to implement our advanced material technology in a production equipment for SiC epitaxy", says Adolf Schöner, CTO of Ascatron. "The next step is to optimise our device design and outsource the remaining manufacturing of the chip to a foundry with capacity for volume production".
"Our investors have a good mix of understanding both the advanced material technology needed for high performance SiC power devices, and how to address volume markets for semiconductors", says Christian Vieider, CEO of Ascatron. "40 percent of the market for power electronic components is in China, and there is a lot of interest in SiC for energy saving".
Target applications are process industry, datacentre, traction, wind power and grid transformers.
