Stathera has raised $55 million USD ($78 million CAD) to boost production of its semiconductor clock technology amid an AI-fuelled push for compute power.
The news: The Montréal startup, founded in 2020 as a spin-out of Nxtsens Microsystems, announced on Tuesday that it had raised an oversubscribed Series B round led by new investor San Francisco-based Maverick Silicon. Existing investors BDC Capital, Celesta Capital, MediaTek Innovation Fund, TXC Corporation, and Ultratech Capital Partners also participated in the all-equity, all-primary round, bringing its total amount raised to $75 million USD.
Stathera develops semiconductor timing technology—a kind of clock for computing chips—for various uses, from mobile devices to hyperscale AI data centres. The company said it’ll use the funding to mass-produce its second-generation silicon timing components and open an office in Silicon Valley.
From the source: “I’m proud we built this in Canada, and that we stayed to do it,” Stathera CEO George Xereas wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Precision timing runs the devices billions of people rely on every day, and there’s no reason it can’t be built here.”
Following the thread: Stathera makes micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) timing components, an alternative to traditional quartz crystal, which it says is less precise and more power-intensive. Xereas told BetaKit that the MEMS industry leader is California’s SiTime Corporation, and Stathera is positioning itself as a credible competitor by eliminating thermal response latency (the delay between a temperature change and a material’s reaction to it).
For the Montréal startup, the timing is opportune: its tech is seeing a spike in interest thanks to a data centre buildout in North America, fuelled largely by anticipated demand for AI compute.
Final thought: Several Canadian-founded deep tech and semiconductor companies have decamped for the US or been acquired by American firms. Tenstorrent redomiciled in the US, in part to secure funding, while startups CentML and Untether.AI were scooped up by US chip giants. While Stathera has prominent, semiconductor-focused US investors, the company’s leadership is signalling a bullishness on Canada that’s perhaps unique within the sector.
Feature image courtesy Vishnu Mohanan on Unsplash.