Intel expands its presence in Spain and increases its investment in the Canary Islands Wooptix

The chip industry in Spain continues to grow with the US giant Intel as one of the agitators. On this occasion, the company has made a new investment in the Canarian company Wooptix, which has raised 10 million euros in a round led by the Spanish venture capital firm Bullnet Capital and the Center for Industrial Technological Development (CDTI) and signed on Thursday, as EL MUNDO has been able to confirm.

Wooptix is a company born as a spin-off of the University of La Laguna in 2016 and that occupies an exceptional place in the Spanish ecosystem: it is the only national company dedicated to manufacturing equipment for chip manufacturers, a market segment that will move 87,000 million dollars in 2023.

Intel, through Intel Capital, has already been a shareholder in the company, but has decided to accompany it in its growth, as is also the case with Bullnet Capital, another of the initial investors.. It should be remembered that Intel will build an R&D laboratory in Barcelona within the framework of the Perte Chip with 400 million euros of public-private investment.

In addition, Wooptix has added to its shareholding Tokyo Electron, one of the leading Japanese manufacturers of semiconductor equipment, the European Innovation Fund and various players in the Basque industry such as Danobatgroup, Fagor Automation and Mondragón Promotion Fund.

Wooptix Metrology Equipment

The startup has developed a tool to measure the wafers in which the chips are placed in three dimensions. This metrology equipment has two virtues: it reduces the time it takes to measure from one minute to one second and it significantly increases the resolution of the images that are captured.

Thus, this solution, whose equipment is currently manufactured in Tenerife, makes it possible to review 60 wafers in the time that traditional teams supervise one, which would enable manufacturers to review all the wafers they produce or use and not just a selection, as is currently the case, with the corresponding million-dollar savings that would be produced by detecting defective products earlier.

USE OF FUNDS

Wooptix, founded by José Manuel Rodríguez and Javier Elizalde, will use the funds to robotize the system and take it to the manufacturing and standardization phase with the aim that it will be present in the large semiconductor factories soon.

The company highlights the flexibility of its technology, which it trusts will allow it to progressively reduce the number of nanometers to be measured to meet the requirements of major manufacturers such as TSMC and Samsung, who are huge in a race to make smaller chips.

As a first step, the company is manufacturing and installing three semiconductor metrology kits, each weighing one metric ton, in Japan, the United States, and the Netherlands.. Company sources acknowledge that all of its clients are international, but have expressed hope that installations attracted by the Perte Chip, such as the one recently announced by Broadcom, will attract a new national flow of clients to the company's offices.