SVTC Technologies said it has raised $34 million in venture funding from existing investors for its chip-making services business.
The San Jose, Calif.-based company makes tools and services that make it easier to develop new chips as well as prototypes for analog components, micro-machined devices, and solar cells. It helps customers design new kinds of memory chips, transistors, biotech devices, image sensors and other chips. It is essentially a chip foundry for prototyping in advance of commercialization.
Investors include Tallwood Venture Capital and Oak Hill Capital. SVTC was formed two years ago when Cypress Semiconductor sold its San Jose, Calif., chip factory for $53 million. SVTC also bought the Austin, Texas,-based research factory of Sematech.
The whole idea is to take on tasks that the chip makers themselves are finding too expensive to do. Much like the experimental fabrication facilities at the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, SVTC's factories are flexible and can be configured to handle a wide variety of chip materials and designs, said Joseph Bronson, chief executive.
SVTC has run more than a million wafers through the factories in the past couple of years and offers 2,500 different chip-making "recipes" for its customers, which range from startups to big chip makers who hire SVTC to avoid capital expenses. SVTC employs more than 300 people.