Pragmatic Semiconductor has concluded the “largest ever” European semiconductor venture funding round with a £182 million close.

The British chipmaker said the funding will enable Pragmatic to accelerate its expansion plans in the UK to meet the growing demand for its technology from customers worldwide.

Plans are said to include the company building its third and fourth fabrication lines at its Pragmatic Park facility in Durham, while over the next five years Pragmatic anticipates building at least eight manufacturing lines in the UK which are anticipated to create 500 highly skilled jobs in the North East and Cambridge.

“This successful Series D round is a clear testament to the massive opportunity for our innovative technology to enable item-level intelligence in virtually any object on the planet,” said Pragmatic chief executive David Moore. “Scaling our manufacturing capacity on the UK’s first ever 300mm wafer production lines at our site in Durham will enable us to deliver hundreds of billions of chips to customers worldwide over the coming decade.”

The funding round, of which Pragmatic said around 70 per cent came from UK-based investors, was led by M&G and the state-owned UK Infrastructure Bank.

“The bank has an important role to play in unlocking finance to scale up domestic supply chains, like semiconductors, which are critical to the UK’s transition to net zero,” said John Flint, chief executive of UK Infrastructure Bank. “Our investment in Pragmatic backs a British business to accelerate development of a first-of-a-kind technology which not only cuts the carbon emissions of semiconductor production, but which will drive growth in the local economy in the North East.”

Fellow UK chipmaker Arm Holdings recently recorded “record revenue” exceeding £800 million in its second quarter since listing on the New York Nasdaq.

However, its shares briefly dipped eight per cent after its third quarter forecast was lower than analyst expectations at $760 million.

The company said at the time: “Industry analysts forecast that the semiconductor industry is starting to recover, which can benefit our royalty revenue, however the trajectory of the recovery is not clear, and the industry remains vulnerable to changes in the external macroeconomic environment.”

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