A Corvallis company helping to enable the next generation of semiconductor manufacturing technology has raised Oregon’s first big round of startup funding this year.

Inpria, which spun out of Oregon State University in 2007, announced Thursday that it has raised $31 million in its third round of funding. The company has raised $76 million altogether.

Its backers now include the world’s biggest chipmakers, among them Intel, Samsung, TSMC and Hynix.

Inpria is helping those companies overcome a major stumbling block that has dramatically slowed the pace of advancement in computer chips. The features on computer chips have grown so tiny that manufacturers cannot reliably produce smaller features.

Intel’s latest generation of 10-nanometer chips hit the market late in 2019, many years behind schedule, after the chipmaker struggled to overcome persistent defects as the features on its chips approach the atomic scale.

So for Intel’s forthcoming 7nm chip, the company is shifting to a new manufacturing tool known as extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV.

These giant EUV tools are about the size of a school bus and cost upwards of $100 million apiece. But they enable chipmakers to project smaller patterns onto silicon wafers, opening the door to smaller features on computer chips. Ever-smaller features, in turn, produce faster and more efficient microprocessors.

Inpria has developed light-sensitive materials that it says enable especially small features on chips built with EUV tools. Prior Inpria investor JSR Corp. led Thursday’s round, joined by Hynix and TSMC.

The 45-employee company said it will use Thursday’s investment to scale up manufacturing and continue developing its products.

Oregon startups raised more venture capital in 2019 than any year since the dot-com era. Inpria’s $31 million is the state’s first big venture investment of 2020.

-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699

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