Aachen-based INCIRT has raised €4.8 million to commercialise a chip architecture it says converts data up to 100 times faster without relying on cutting-edge fabs.
INCIRT, a deeptech semiconductor company based in Aachen, Germany, has closed a €4.8 million funding round led by Lifeline Ventures, with participation from High-Tech Gründerfonds, as it moves to commercialise a chip architecture the company says can deliver data conversion speeds up to 100 times faster than conventional approaches.
The funding will support product development, technology validation, initial customer projects and market entry, with the company targeting satellite communications and telecommunications as its first commercial markets.
A Different Approach to a Semiconductor Bottleneck
Data converters are a foundational component in modern communication and sensor systems, translating signals between the digital world and physical applications. The conventional path to improving their performance has long followed the semiconductor industry’s broader logic: shrink the manufacturing process, increase transistor density, accept higher costs and greater complexity. INCIRT is betting on a different route.
Rather than chasing smaller manufacturing nodes, the company has redesigned the underlying system architecture, using intelligent parallelisation to achieve performance gains it says are difficult to reach through incremental process improvements alone. The approach has already produced a working silicon chip, manufactured using 22-nanometer technology at a European facility — a detail the company is positioning as strategically significant at a moment when semiconductor supply chain resilience has become a priority for governments and industry alike.
Also Read: “The AI Economy Has Moved From the Training Phase Into the Inference Phase,” Says Jensen Huang
“Our architecture enables performance gains that are difficult to achieve with conventional semiconductor approaches,” said Oner Hanay, INCIRT’s co-founder and chief executive, “while demonstrating that high-performance chips can be realised using European manufacturing.”
Why It Matters Beyond the Lab
The company’s targeted practical applications are well chosen. In satellite communications, where power budgets are tight and data volumes are growing rapidly, higher throughput at lower energy consumption addresses a genuine engineering constraint. In telecommunications, the technology is positioned to support increased network capacity and reduced operating costs — and, the company says, to remain relevant as networks evolve beyond current 5G standards.
The broader context gives the announcement additional weight. Europe has invested heavily in reducing its dependence on non-European semiconductor manufacturing, and a working chip produced at a European 22-nanometer node — rather than requiring the advanced nodes dominated by manufacturers in Taiwan or South Korea — fits neatly into that industrial policy agenda.
Also Read: At Google Cloud Next, a Unified Push to Fortify Enterprise Cybersecurity
The round’s lead investor, Lifeline Ventures, is a Finnish early-stage fund with a track record in deeptech. High-Tech Gründerfonds, a German public-private seed investor focused on technology spinouts, has participated alongside.
INCIRT did not disclose revenue figures, customer commitments or a timeline for commercial product availability.
