Swiss Nanotech startup Chiral raises €10M to industrialize post-silicon chip production

Chiral, a Swiss nanotechnology company developing manufacturing solutions for next-generation semiconductors and quantum devices, has closed a €10 million ($12 million) seed funding round to scale its nanomaterial integration technology.

Crane Venture Partners led the investment, joined by Quantonation, HCVC, and Founderful, alongside public funding from Innosuisse, Switzerland's innovation agency.

The ETH Zurich and Empa spin-off is tackling what CEO Seoho Jung describes as a critical industry bottleneck: "Nanomaterials have shown outstanding performance in research for years, but without scalable and controllable manufacturing, their impact remains limited. Chiral has the necessary capabilities that can turn material-level breakthroughs into industrial reality."

Bridging the Lab-to-Factory Gap

As Moore's Law approaches its physical and economic limits, the semiconductor industry is increasingly looking beyond conventional silicon. Materials like carbon nanotubes and two-dimensional compounds have demonstrated superior performance in laboratories, and major manufacturers including TSMC have incorporated nanomaterials into their technology roadmaps.

However, industrial adoption has lagged due to manufacturing challenges—specifically, the difficulty of integrating these materials at scale without contamination or precision loss.

Chiral's solution centers on what it describes as the industry's first robotic nanomaterial integration system. The platform combines automation, high-precision engineering, and artificial intelligence to enable controlled, contamination-free placement of nanomaterials onto silicon wafers—a crucial step in transitioning from experimental devices to production-scale manufacturing.

"Our customers will soon announce results that demonstrate how Chiral's technology has advanced their device performance," Jung said. "In parallel, we are moving from development into deployment, with our first commercial systems being installed at customer sites this year."

Part of a Broader European Push

The funding round fits within a wider trend of European investment in advanced computing hardware and semiconductor alternatives. Since early 2025, more than €35 million in combined venture capital and public funding has flowed to European companies working on post-silicon technologies.

Recent examples include UK-based Optalysys, which raised €26.4 million in January 2026 for photonic computing chips; Spain's Ipronics, which secured €2.4 million in 2025 for programmable photonic systems; and Germany's SpiNNcloud, which received approximately €10 million to develop energy-efficient computing infrastructure.

These investments reflect growing recognition that addressing performance, energy efficiency, and manufacturing constraints will require fundamental departures from traditional silicon architectures.

From Academic Spin-Off to Commercial Deployment

Founded in 2023, Chiral has moved quickly from research to commercialization. Since its pre-seed round two years ago, the company has refined its automation and process control systems, built its first commercial equipment, and begun working with industry and research customers to accelerate their development timelines.

Krishna Visvanathan, Co-founder and Partner at Crane Venture Partners, emphasized the company's engineering-focused approach: "The next foundational shift in computing won't come from materials alone—it will come from making those materials work for real systems and real customers. Chiral brings that level of engineering discipline to nanomaterials, and that's why we believe they have an important role to play in what comes after silicon."

The fresh capital will support Chiral's mission to enable wafer-scale manufacturing of post-silicon computing chips based on nanomaterials, positioning the company to help unlock the next generation of semiconductor performance beyond conventional limits.