Prof William Scanlon, CEO, Tyndall Institute. Image: Tyndall Institute
Silicon Catalyst’s semiconductor start-up founders will be able to tap into insights from researchers at Ireland’s Tyndall Institute.
Tyndall National Institute has formed a partnership with Silicon Catalyst, a semiconductor start-up incubator based in the US.
The collaboration will connect the Irish research centre to scaling start-ups and SMEs, creating new working partnerships between industry and academia globally.
Based at University College Cork, Tyndall specialises in deep-tech research in electronics and photonics. Its team works with industry to transform research into products in its core areas of electronics, communications, energy, health, agri-food and the environment.
Tyndall already has a network of more than 200 industry partners and customers worldwide, as well as a multidisciplinary research community of more than 600 people of 52 nationalities.
Silicon Catalyst has built up a strong ecosystem for semiconductor start-up founders who now will be able to tap into Tyndall’s insights.
The incubator grants access to electronic design automation tools, silicon foundry runs and intellectual property. It also provides networking, access to finance and advice to start-ups that are looking to scale.
“Through this agreement, Tyndall’s infrastructure, comprising of an investment of more than €250m in semiconductor fabrication, characterisation and qualification, will be made available to the Silicon Catalyst portfolio at reduced rates,” said Tyndall’s commercial director, Peter Smyth.
He added that this will help these “highly differentiated start-ups” to shorten time to revenue and achieve scale.
Peter Finnegan, head of new ventures at Tyndall, added: “This symbiotic relationship with Silicon Catalyst will enable Tyndall to bring its own pipeline of exciting semiconductor start-ups to the accelerator programme and it also offers exciting networking opportunities for our early-stage ventures.”
The partnership is timely with the adoption of the European and US Chips Acts earlier this year. The European Chips Act proposes easing state aid rules to fund new developments and improve resilience in a time of chip shortages.
Managing partner at Silicon Catalyst UK, Sean Redmond, welcomed Tyndall to the partnership and said he was delighted to be “leveraging their world-class photonics research centre and IC design expertise”.
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