In the first half of 2025, European semiconductor companies raised €1.4 billion across 30 deals, accounting for roughly 4 per cent of total capital and 1.5 per cent of deal activity within European tech, which reached €33.7 billion across 1,941 deals.
Investment focused on scaling fabrication and power-semiconductor capacity, alongside emerging technologies in edge AI, photonic computing, and materials engineering.
The ten largest rounds reflect this balance, combining substantial infrastructure financing with innovation to strengthen Europe’s semiconductor competitiveness and resilience.
NXP Semiconductors (Netherlands)
Amount raised in H1 2025: €1B
NXP Semiconductors is a global technology company that develops embedded semiconductors and systems for automotive, industrial, IoT, and secure connectivity applications.
Their offerings include microcontrollers, processors, wireless solutions, and secure hardware, all designed to enable intelligent, connected, and autonomous systems. Their innovations span domains such as software-defined vehicles, factory automation, edge computing, and security.
In January, NXP Semiconductors secured a €1 billion EIB loan to support EU chip ecosystem development under the Chips Act and the Netherlands’ technology strategy, boosting Europe’s semiconductor competitiveness.
Axelera AI (Netherlands)
Amount raised in H1 2025: €61.6M
Axelera AI develops edge AI acceleration hardware and software.
Their Metis AI Processing Units (AIPUs) and Voyager SDK enable efficient, programmable inference across use cases like robotics, industrial automation, smart cities, and healthcare. The company integrates both hardware and software to bring high-performance and energy-efficient AI capabilities closer to the edge.
In March, Axelera AI secured €61.6 million to advance the launch of Titania in 2028, a high-efficiency, high-performance solution for data-intensive AI applications and future zetta-scale HPC centres at a competitive price.
Cambridge GaN Devices (UK)
Amount raised in H1 2025: £25M
Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) is a fabless semiconductor company spun out of the University of Cambridge.
The company develops energy-efficient GaN-based power ICs using its proprietary ICeGaN™ technology to drive greener electronics and performance gains.
In February, Cambridge GaN Devices raised £25 million in Series C funding to accelerate its growth and advance efforts to reduce energy consumption across multiple industries.
Swave (Belgium)
Amount raised in H1 2025: €27M
Swave Photonics is a fabless semiconductor company that designs holographic chips using proprietary diffractive photonics techniques.
It's work powers reality-first spatial computing for AR devices via its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform, which sculpts lightwaves into 3D holograms.
In January, Swave Photonics closed a €27 million Series A round, bringing total funding to over €37 million to advance its 3D holographic display technology.
Salience Labs (UK)
Amount raised in H1 2025: $30M
Salience Labs develops photonic switching solutions for AI data centres.
Their silicon photonic switches aim to eliminate networking bottlenecks by enabling full optical connectivity between compute nodes, improving bandwidth, latency, and energy efficiency.
Salience Labs raised $30 million in February to advance its optical switches for large-scale AI networking.
CamGraPhic (UK)
Amount raised in H1 2025: €25M
CamGraPhIC is a photonics company developing graphene-integrated optical interconnects and transceivers for telecom, datacom, and AI workloads.
Its technology aims to deliver ultra-high bandwidth, low-latency, and energy-efficient data links by integrating graphene with silicon photonics, providing a scalable path for next-generation networks.
CamGraPhIC raised €25 million in Series A in March, to expand R&D in Pisa, build its senior team, and begin scaling in Milan, optimising the technology for high-volume semiconductor foundry manufacturing.
iPRONICS (Spain)
Amount raised in H1 2025: €20M
iPRONICS is a company developing software-defined photonic networking solutions for AI data centres. The company builds lossless optical switches and programmable photonic engines under its iPRONICS ONE product line, aiming for low latency, high bandwidth, and rapid reconfiguration.
In January, the company raised €20 million in a Series A round to accelerate the deployment of its iPRONICS ONE optical networking engine in AI data centres, supporting scalable, high-bandwidth, and energy-efficient communication with dynamic topology reconfiguration at the physical layer.
Vertical Compute (Belgium)
Amount raised in H1 2025: €20M
Vertical Compute is a deeptech semiconductor startup spun out of imec that is developing a vertically integrated memory-and-compute architecture to overcome AI’s “memory wall.”
Its chiplet approach places vertical data columns directly above processing cores and leverages nano-magnetism, aiming to slash data movement, cut energy use, and boost throughput for large AI workloads.
The company raised €20 million in January 2025 to develop next-generation AI systems that deliver greater performance and memory density than conventional DRAM.
IceMOS Technology (UK)
Amount raised in H1 2025: $22M
IceMOS Technology is a semiconductor company specialising in thick-film SOI and SiSi wafers, advanced engineering substrates, and high-voltage Superjunction MOSFETs and MEMS solutions.
IceMOS delivers custom silicon wafers (100 mm to 200 mm) and dielectric isolation technology using deep trench etching and bonded silicon processes. The company offers foundry services, high-resolution acoustic wafer inspection, and tailored substrate engineering for MEMS and IC applications.
In April 2025, it raised $22 million in a Series E round to support the launch of its novel mSJMOS power semiconductor device technology and scale production and engineering capabilities.
AccelerComm (UK)
Amount raised in H1 2025: $15M
AccelerComm is a company offering physical layer (PHY) solutions and accelerator IP cores for 5G and 6G, including hybrid satellite (NTN) networks.
They provide configurable, standards-compatible IP cores for CPUs, SoCs, ASICs, and space-qualified silicon, along with reference systems and consulting. Their solutions aim for high performance, low power, and flexibility across hardware platforms.
In June, AccelerComm secured $15 million in funding to advance its 5G satellite network solutions to accelerate the rollout of universal mobile connectivity through space-based infrastructure.
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