A mass producer of graphene-based electronic devices has landed £41m Series C funding round after a lengthy approval process which saw it come within two weeks of running out of cash.
Paragraf said the investment led by Mubadala – the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates – will help the Cambridgeshire-headquartered company scale up its production capabilities as it looks to push graphene-based electronics into wider commercial adoption.
The company has also called for the process of national security reviews to be improved after it waited six months for the investment to be approved by Whitehall, with CEO and co-founder Simon Thomas telling The Times that the firm was ‘pushed to the wire’ and had to rely on ‘cash in the bank’.
The now-completed deal gives Mubadala a 12.8% stake in the business after ministerial approval and, despite the delays, it puts Paragraf in a position to ramp up production and bring its graphene-based chips closer to mass-market deployment.
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Its chips are made from graphene, which enables faster, more precise operation in extreme environments – a quality that makes it particularly valuable in sectors like quantum computing, where chips must perform under cryogenic conditions.
“This investment is a strong signal of confidence in Paragraf and our mission in the face of global economic uncertainty,” said Thomas.
“This new funding will enable us to expand production of faster, more energy-efficient technologies to the scale required by major commercial opportunities.
“In what is a particularly challenging funding environment, we’ve attracted strong interest and are pleased to have secured the backing of both new and existing partners who share our vision for transforming electronics with graphene.”