Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies appoints Giorgio Anania as chair of the board

He brings over 35 years’ experience developing growth strategies for deeptech startups in fields such as silicon photonics, semiconductor displays, and optical components for broadband networks, and over 20 years in semiconductors. This appointment underlines the strength of Intrinsic’s technology, itself backed by extensive academic research which redefines how memory is used in smart Edge devices.

Intrinsic secured £6 million in equity funding earlier this year in a funding round led by Octopus Ventures, supported by existing investors IP Group and the UCL Technology Fund, alongside £1m in InnovateUK grants. The company is now focused on building its technology and product team as it further develops its breakthrough innovations. Appointing Giorgio Anania provides Intrinsic with access to world-class industry expertise as it moves towards the next phase of commercialisation. In addition to his extensive commercial knowhow in bringing startups to market and taking them public, Giorgio Anania has founded or participated in seven technology startups in four countries, raised over $1.7 billion, and executed three NASDAQ and LSE IPOs. Giorgio Anania has a strong background in electronics and engineering, with an M.A. in physics from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in thermonuclear fusion from Princeton University.

“Today’s artificial intelligence and machine learning edge applications in areas like speech recognition, smart sensors and autonomous vehicles demand more on-chip memory than current embedded flash technology can provide,” said Giorgio Anania, Chair, Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies. “Intrinsic Semiconductor’s technology can address all these issues with lower power consumption and higher speed, all manufacturable on the same chip as the processor to reduce costs. This is why I’m excited to be joining Intrinsic, as overcoming this memory bottleneck will open up huge commercial opportunities to grow revenues rapidly and scale the business.”

Based on more than a decade’s research at University College London (UCL), Intrinsic has developed an innovative approach to non-volatile memory using resistive random-access memory (RRAM). The technology can read data 10x to 100x faster and write it 1000x faster than existing solutions, and uses standard, commonly used materials, which are less complex or expensive compared to other emerging memory solutions. It is also fully CMOS compliant to make it easy and cost effective for foundries to integrate this memory technology within existing chip manufacturing facilities and onto the same chip as the CPU.

Intrinsic sees many opportunities to integrate its technology in applications such as autonomous vehicles, remote monitoring solutions, real-time video enhancement, voice-activated applications, and health monitoring. As its technology offers higher performance at lower cost and lower energy consumption, it will make it practical to store and process data locally. Data will no longer need to be stored or processed in the Cloud, which is essential for those applications operating remotely where connectivity cannot be guaranteed. 

“We are delighted to welcome Giorgio Anania to the Board as we progress the commercial and technology roadmap for the company,” added Mark Dickinson, CEO, Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies. “In the near future we will be looking to turn proof-of-concept pilots into commercial opportunities, so it will be invaluable to call on Giorgio’s experience as we look to build on our competitive advantage to become a global standard for on-chip memory.”

Intrinsic was founded in 2017 by Professor Tony Kenyon, Dr Adnan Mehonic and Dr Wing Ng, who are leading researchers into non-volatile memory at the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London. The company previously received seed funding from UCLB, UCL Technology Fund and IP Group for its cutting-edge research in this sector.