Thintronics is a California-based electronic materials startup that supplies high-performance insulators for emerging AI data centers, networking, and RF/millimeter-wave (mmW) applications. It raised a $23 million Series A funding round, led by Maverick Capital and Translink Capital. The funding will support the commercialization of a novel insulator platform.
The company was launched because conventional assumptions guiding insulator material development limited the industry’s capacity to innovate. Since then, it has developed a suite of high-performance materials with electrical and mechanical characteristics that far outpace the state of the art.
KEY QUOTES:
“The interconnect insulator is foundational to modern electronics; however, it has yet to be optimized to operate near the theoretical limit of insulation. Additionally, the supply chain is fragmented across multiple electronic architectures. It is our vision to optimize the insulator and unify it across the fabric.”
“Maverick and Translink bring deep connections and experience in our target entry markets, and a powerful ecosystem of partner companies here in the US and in Asia” and stresses “their expertise and networks in semiconductor and high-speed digital markets can ensure our success.”
- Thintronics’ CEO Stefan Pastine
“To satisfy the explosive growth in demand for high performance compute, AI datacenters will need to incorporate faster data transfer speeds and wider bandwidth, while improving on power consumption and signal integrity. This is a formidable challenge that requires material redesign across all levels of the interconnect fabric, and we believe that Thintronics’ innovation in insulator film is a fundamental substrate-level enabler as AI servers adopt 224G standards and beyond. Additionally, Thintronics domestically sources all its components, and we believe this is a crucial step in onshoring advanced packaging technologies and ensuring that supply chains are vertically integrated in the U.S.”
- Maverick Capital’s Kenny Safar
“Thrilled to support the Thintronics team in realizing their vision to deliver novel materials solutions which elegantly solve critical electrical performance bottlenecks for the AI data center and other high-performance applications. As the industry grapples with the end of Moore’s Law, which has driven semiconductor scaling for decades, the increased adoption of multi-chip packaging and PCB-level solutions becomes paramount. Thintronics’ holistic solutions across technology disciplines are precisely what is urgently needed to realize higher performance from the global supply chain.”
- Translink Capital’s Brendan Walsh
“The combination of superior electrical and thermo-mechanical performance allows our customers to unlock new design possibilities and new applications in Networking, AI acceleration, RF mmW communication, and Radar. Additionally, by synthesizing ultra-thin dielectric layers, Thintronics enables form factor design optimization for Consumer and Infrastructure devices and products.”
- CTO Tristan El Bouayadi
