Silicon Radar seeks funds for 120GHz push
The company attended the Innovations Village venture capital pitching event held alongside Semicon Europa in Dresden last week (see Startup pitch-fest opens Semicon Europa show). At the event Anja Boelicke, CEO of the company, said that the company is seeking about €3 million (about $3.4 million).
Boelicke explained that although Silicon Radar was founded in 2006 it had originally adopted a design service business model and been profitable since 2008. The company added a product business model in 2013 with some 24GHz chips and now has traction with customers for those chips including with Garmin in a rear-view radar product.
Boelicke told the audience that Silicon Radar now wants to design a 120GHz front-end and expand a design team in Ulm and establish sales and business development in the United States. "We only need the money to be fast," she said.
Possible applications for the 120GHz chip would include radars for drones and robots where the higher frequency would bring higher bandwith and higher accuracy at a range of less than 50 meters. It could also be used for gesture recognition for small displays.
The company usually designs for a 130nm silicon-germanium process manufactured by the IHP (Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics) research institute also in Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. Boelicke said that while IHP provides relatively low volumes of chips there are plans to transfer the process to a foundry for high volumes.
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