SiPearl went into production a few days ago. Is this a turning point in the company’s history? What are the next steps?
The beginning of the production is not a turning point. It was meant to happen as it is one of the steps that must be followed for a fabless company like SiPearl. We designed the chips in their entirety; we are now sending the chips to production before validating the various aspects. We are going to make sure everything we have worked on, such as servers and software, work as expected. Then, we are going to launch mass production. We are following our plan.
For a young company such as SiPearl, the design phase of the first chip requires a lot of time, as we must bring together a very high-quality team and fine-tune the process. The next generations will be much faster.
As production is being launched, we are starting the design process of generations 2 and 3.
Was the success of your last capital round conditional on the start of production?
Yes and no, actually. The production launch is something that is planned a long time in advance. But it is true that this phase costs a lot of money and the last capital round is good news.
This latest round of financing saw the arrival of Taiwanese company Cathay Financial Holding. What does the new shareholder’s arrival mean for the future?
We are very happy to have the trust of our very first financial investor. Cathay Financial Holding is based in Taiwan, a country that is strategic in our market. TSMC, the fab we work with, is in Taiwan. Motherboard makers and server makers are – for most of them – based in Taiwan as well. Most of the servers integrated in France and Europe (even though they are not very-well known) are from Taiwan.
Cathay Financial Holding is an evergreen funds so it is a perfect match for us. We are likely to have some corporate shareholders from there too. So, Taiwan is definitively the place to be.
Other countries are interested in becoming SiPearl shareholders as we have the will to stay sovereign and not depend on the US or China. From India to Middle East or Canada, most countries want to build strategic independence. They see an interesting and reliable solution in SiPearl.
SiPearl is expanding rapidly in different European countries, what are the company’s objectives in those countries?
Leading a company like SiPearl means facing multiple issues. These include access to cash, access to market and access to human resources. There is a global shortage of semiconductor engineers that makes our task quite challenging. We have a great team of 25 people in Spain and we are starting to build a team in Italy. There are many projects in the defence sector between France and Italy and it offers some interesting possibilities for us.
Actually, the semiconductor sector is in the spotlight more than ever, particularly because of its applications in the defence sector. What does this mean for SiPearl?
The rise of the defence sector is an important factor for us, as the chips we develop can have dual use (both civilian and military applications). As a reminder, our R1 is the most complex and most powerful CPU ever designed in Europe. No one knows what will happen within a couple of years but surely it will be an asset to get access this kind of technology.
What about quantum computing?
Quantum computing is an interesting area, but it will only represent between 5% and 10% of the market. It is important for the defence sector not to be left behind in this area. As far as SiPearl is concerned, we made the choice to address 90% of the market.
How can SiPearl be an instrument of French and European sovereignty? Is this a legitimate ambition for such a young company? What is at stake?
SiPearl has been in the semiconductor market for a few years now. It is quite a new company but with a strong background already.
SiPearl is just one element needed to reach complete sovereignty, but this necessitates accelerators, software and data centres. There are multiple market technology segments that should be mastered by companies like SiPearl to help Europe gain true independence.
A country like France cannot do it all alone, budgets should be devised at the European level. Europe is equipping itself with Digiconnect, EIC, EIB, EuroHPC, which have been our first supporters. France 2030, a €54 billion programme has also helped us and is now our main shareholder. I cannot thank the people who believe in our mission and who showed it again during the last financial round enough.
Our challenge is to remain an European company supported by the EU. We have a lot of ambition regarding the programmes such as EIC (European Innovation Council), EIC Step and EIC Scale-Up. EIC now has a worldwide reputation, and it is an important partner for the development of SiPearl.
What do you expect from the Chips Act 2?
The Chips Act 2 is an important matter we do follow closely. Like many experts and decision-makers, we hope that the philosophy will be different from the first Chips Act. It was made for players already well-settled with fab infrastructures. The Chips Act was far from perfect, but it was a necessary first step. Now we expect the Chips Act 2 to be much more in favour of SMEs, especially fabless ones with a significant part of the budget directed in this direction. If you take giants such as AMD, Quakcomm, Nvidia or AWS, all of them are fabless. It means something.
Nonetheless, is being fabless a potential weakness?
In the semiconductor sector, planning is of a paramount importance. Choosing a fab is done before starting to design the chip. We are happy to work with a leader like TSMC. If the situation went wrong in Taiwan—which I hope it does not—some very good options for next generation chips have been identified. I can think of Samsung in South Korea, Intel—who owns a fab in Ireland—or even TSMC, which has a facility in the US.
In a perfect world, TSMC would have a fab in Europe, or a 100% European fab would be our partner to produce chips. Still, such a perspective today feels far away as far as I can see. Japan could be a model in this matter for the Europeans. The country is much smaller than Europe, but it has been able to develop a kind of a mini fab which is targeting 2 nanometres. This was made possible thanks to a strong political pressure. Like Europe, Japan has a culture of semiconductors. What is being done there could be done here in Europe as well.
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