Semiconductor manufacturing gear startup Nearfield Instruments has raised €135 million ($147.6 million) in a Series C funding round.
The round was led by Walden Catalyst and Temasek and saw participation from M&G Investment, Innovation Industries, Invest-NL, and ING.
Founded in 2016 as a spin-off from the Dutch research institute TNO, Netherlands-based Nearfield Instruments develops advanced metrology systems for the semiconductor manufacturing industry. The company’s nanometrology solutions support advanced 3D memory and logic devices and its QUADRA 3D metrology system provides non-destructive, high-throughput, and high-resolution metrology capabilities.
The company currently employees 170 people and has offices in Eindhoven – the city where ASML is headquartered – in the Netherlands, and Pyeongtaek, South Korea.
In a statement, Nearfield Instruments said the funding represents the second-largest capital raise in the Europen and the US semiconductor fabrication equipment market in the past five years.
Dr. Hamed Sadeghian, co-founder and CEO of Nearfield Instruments said the funding would enable the company to ramp up production capacity, expand its product portfolio, and strengthen its position as a key player in the semiconductor equipment industry.
Eric Meurice, chairman of the Nearfield Instruments supervisory board added: “This fantastic outcome enables us to accelerate Nearfield’s efforts to provide unique solutions to meet the industry’s metrology and inspection needs for the most advanced nodes.
“Providing process control and yield improvement is critical in this global industry. It is great to see the continued support of our shareholders combined with the onboarding of new industry-leading investors who will reinforce our global view and network and cement the company’s position as the leader in Metrology & Inspection.”
Including this latest round, to date Nearfield Instruments has raised a total of $218 million across six funding rounds.