Berlin — Project A Ventures has led the €254.4 million finan­cing round of Aachen-based DeepT­ech start-up Black Semi­con­duc­tor as lead inves­tor. Porsche Ventures acted as co-lead inves­tor, other new inves­tors are Scania Growth, Capna­mic, Tech Vision Fonds and NRW.BANK. Exis­ting inves­tors such as Vsquared Ventures, Cambium Capi­tal and Onsight Ventures are also parti­ci­pa­ting in the Series A finan­cing round. Project A Ventures was alre­ady a co-lead inves­tor in the seed finan­cing round. YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to Project A Ventures.

In addi­tion to the €25.7 million in equity finan­cing from venture capi­tal inves­tors, the semi­con­duc­tor start-up recei­ves €228.7 million in funding from the Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and the state of North Rhine-West­pha­lia. The public funding is spread over seven years as part of the EU IPCEI ME/CT program.
Over­all, this is one of the largest finan­cings for a deep tech chip company in Europe.

Foun­ded in 2020 by Dr. Daniel Schall and Sebas­tian Schall, the company uses graphene to improve the perfor­mance and effi­ci­ency of chips. Graphene is an inno­va­tive mate­rial that acce­le­ra­tes data commu­ni­ca­tion between chips and increa­ses energy effi­ci­ency. This tech­no­logy thus enables trans­for­ma­tive appli­ca­ti­ons in various areas such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, data centers and auto­no­mous driving.
The start-up intends to use the new capi­tal to expand its produc­tion capa­ci­ties and drive forward the deve­lo­p­ment of a new gene­ra­tion of graphene-based chips.

Advi­sors: YPOG has alre­ady advi­sed Project A Ventures on the seed finan­cing round.
Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin
Dr. Ferdi­nand Cadmus (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin
Roman Schäle (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin.

About Project A Ventures

Project A is one of the leading early-stage tech inves­tors in Europe with offices in Berlin and London. In addi­tion to $1 billion in assets under manage­ment, Project A supports its port­fo­lio compa­nies with a plat­form team of over 140 profes­sio­nals in key areas such as soft­ware and product deve­lo­p­ment, busi­ness intel­li­gence, brand, design, marke­ting, sales and recrui­ting. The venture capi­tal company was foun­ded in 2012 and has supported more than 100 start-ups to date. The port­fo­lio includes compa­nies such as Trade Repu­blic, World­Re­mit, senn­der, KRY, Spry­ker, Cata­wiki, Unmind and Voi. https://www.project‑a.com