Female-founded semiconductor AI startup SixSense raises $8.5M

A Singapore -based Deep Tech Startup is called Sixsense Created an AI-powered platform that semiconductor manufacturers help predict and identify potential chip errors in the production line in real time.

It has collected $ 8.5 million in Series A and its total funds bring about $ 12 million. The round was led by Pick XV Serge (formerly Sikoia India and C), Alpha Intelligence Capital, Fabbe and others participating.

Established in 2018 by Engineer Akankasha Jagwani (CTO) and Abni Agarwal (CEO), a basic challenge in the production of semiconductor is to solve a basic challenge: transforming raw production information to real-time insights, which helps to prevent technical problems and improve the yield.

Despite the perfect amount of information generated on the fab floor, what stood to co-founders was an amazing lack of real-time intelligence.

Akankasha Hyundai Motors and GE for manufacturers such as Embib bring deep understanding about production, quality control and software automation through the building automation solutions for the development of LED products in Startups like Embib. Agarwal has added technical experiences on the visa since its time, where he developed a large data analytics system, some of which was later protected as trade privacy. A skilled coder with a powerful background of mathematics, he has long been interested in applying AI to the Traditional detective industry, beyond fintech.

Together, both of them evaluate sectors from the aircraft to the automobile before landing in semiconductor. Despite the reputation of the semicircular industry for accuracy, the inspection processes often remain manual and fragmented, Agarwal told TechCrunch. He added that after talking to more than 50 engineers, it has become clear that there are significant places to modernize how quality checks are made.

Agarwal says today fabs are filled with dashboard, SPC charts and inline inspection systems, but mostly display data without further analysis. “The burden of using it for decision -making still falls on engineers: [they must] Investigate the spot patterns, inconsistencies and trace the root causes. It does not make good scales well with the complexity of timely, subjective and growing processes ”

They provide initial alert before increasing the ability to identify the potential problems of Sixsense engineers, such as the identification of the root cause, and the forecast for failure.

Agarwal says the platform for Sixessense is specially designed to be used by engineers, especially than data scientists. “Processes engineers can make subtle tunes using their own fab data, deploy them within two days, and believe in the results-it does not write a single line of code. It makes the platform both strong and practical.”

Competitive landscape in-house engineering teams Cognex and Halakon, inspection equipment manufacturers integrate AI on their system and include startups including Landing.AE and Robovision.

The AI platform of Sixsense is already being used to major semiconductor manufacturers such as Globalfoundry and JCTT, which has been processed more than 100 million to today. Customers have reported up to 30% fast manufacturing cycle, increased yield 1-2% and a 90% decrease in manual inspection, the founder said. The system is compatible with inspection equipment that cover more than 60% of the global market.

Agarwal says, “Our aim is to consumers, including large-scale chipmeaker-foundry, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test suppliers (OSATS) and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs),” Agarwal says. “We’re already working with Fabs in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Israel and are now expanding to the United States”

Geo -political tensions, especially between the United States and China, are re -shape where chips are formed, which runs new production investment around the world.

“We can see that the fabs and the Osats have expanded aggressively in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, India and the United States-and this is a telwind for us. Because we are already located in this region, and many of these new benefits are starting to renew their inheritance without their inheritance.”