BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 29, 2024--
Thintronics Inc. is a California-based electronic materials startup supplying high-performance insulators for emerging AI datacenter, networking, and RF/millimeter-wave (mmW) applications.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240424926089/en/
Thintronics Inc. has raised a Series A funding round for $23M, led by Maverick Capital and Translink Capital. Series A funding will support commercialization of a novel insulator platform.
The company was founded on the idea that conventional assumptions guiding insulator material development limited the capacity of the industry to innovate. They have since developed a suite of high-performance materials that display electrical and mechanical characteristics that far outpace the state of the art. Thintronics’ CEO Stefan Pastine emphasizes that "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 Capital’s Kenny Safar is convinced that “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.”
Translink Capital’s Brendan Walsh is “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.”
To satisfy this growing demand Thintronics is entering the insulator market with technologies targeting chipsets, switches, and datacenter integrators for 224G links and beyond. For CTO Tristan El Bouayadi, "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."
Pastine highlights that "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."
ABOUT THINTRONICS
Thintronics Inc. is reinventing interconnect insulator technologies to unlock next-generation computing, networking and wireless performance. The company's novel materials enable wider bandwidths, increased power efficiency, and highly integrated form factors for advanced computing and communication systems.
ABOUT MAVERICK CAPITAL
Maverick Capital is a global investment firm that has been investing in early-stage companies for over 30 years. By working with Maverick, early and growth stage entrepreneurs get the best of both worlds – a focused, agile team of venture partners – and the resources, reputation and relationships of a multi-billion-dollar manager.
ABOUT TRANSLINK CAPITAL
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Translink Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in technology-based startups in the enterprise, infrastructure, sustainability, and robotics sectors. Founded in 2006, the firm has over $1 billion of assets under management and has been engineered to bring founders and their innovative companies together with a unique set of global resources and networks to support their journey to build foundational companies in their sector.
Thintronics unified insulator suite (Graphic: Thintronics)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Thursday that humanitarian aid will soon begin flowing onto the Gaza shore through the new pier that was anchored to the beach and will begin reaching those in need almost immediately.
Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters that the U.S. believes there will be no backups in the distribution of the aid, which is being coordinated by the United Nations.
The U.N., however, said fuel imports have all but stopped and this will make it extremely difficult to deliver the aid to Gaza’s people, all 2.3 million of whom are in acute need of food and other supplies after seven months of intense fighting between Israel and Hamas.
“We desperately need fuel,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said. “It doesn’t matter how the aid comes, whether it’s by sea or whether by land, without fuel, aid won’t get to the people.”
Singh said the issue of fuel deliveries comes up in all conversations with the Israelis.
The U.S. military finished installing a floating pier off the Gaza Strip early Thursday, and officials were making final checks before trucks begin driving onto the shore to deliver pallets of aid.
The pier project, expected to cost $320 million, was ordered more than two months ago by U.S. President Joe Biden to help starving Palestinians as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting hinder food and other supplies from making it into Gaza.
Fraught with logistical, weather and security challenges, the pier project is not considered a substitute for far cheaper deliveries by land that aid agencies say are much more sustainable.
The boatloads of aid will be deposited at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City and then distributed by aid groups.
U.S. officials said Thursday as much as 500 tons of food will begin arriving on the Gaza shore within days and that the U.S. has closely coordinated with Israel on how to protect the ships and personnel working on the beach.
But there are still questions on how aid groups will safely operate in Gaza to distribute food to those who need it most, said Sonali Korde, assistant to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which is helping with logistics.
“There is a very insecure operating environment" and aid groups are still struggling to get clearance for their planned movements in Gaza, Korde said. Those talks with the Israeli military “need to get to a place where humanitarian aid workers feel safe and secure and able to operate safely. And I don’t think we’re there yet.”
Fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of the southern city of Rafah as well as Israel restarting combat operations in parts of northern Gaza have displaced some 700,000 people, U.N. officials say. Israel recently seized the key Rafah border crossing in its push against Hamas.
Pentagon officials say the fighting isn’t threatening the new shoreline aid distribution area, but they have made it clear that security conditions will be monitored closely and could prompt a shutdown of the maritime route, even just temporarily.
Already, the site has been targeted by mortar fire during its construction, and Hamas has threatened to target any foreign forces who “occupy” the Gaza Strip.
The “protection of U.S. forces participating is a top priority. And as such, in the last several weeks, the United States and Israel have developed an integrated security plan to protect all the personnel," said Navy Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, a deputy commander at the U.S. military's Central Command. "We are confident in the ability of this security arrangement to protect those involved.”
Central Command stressed that none of its forces entered the Gaza Strip to secure the pier and would not during its operations. It said trucks with aid would move ashore in the coming days and "the United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza.”
The World Food Program will be the U.N. agency handling the aid, officials said.
Israeli forces will be in charge of security on shore, but there are also two U.S. Navy warships nearby, the USS Arleigh Burke and the USS Paul Ignatius. Both are destroyers equipped with a wide range of weapons and capabilities to protect American troops offshore and allies on the beach.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani confirmed that the pier had been attached and that Israeli engineering units had flattened ground around the area and surfaced roads for trucks.
“We have been working for months on full cooperation with (the U.S. military) on this project, facilitating it, supporting it in any way possible,” Shoshani said. “It’s a top priority in our operation.”
The U.N., U.S. and international aid groups say Israel is allowing only a fraction of the normal pre-war deliveries of food and other supplies into Gaza since Hamas' attacks on Israel launched the war in October. Aid agencies say they are running out of food in southern Gaza and fuel is dwindling, while USAID and the World Food Program say famine has taken hold in Gaza’s north.
Israel says it places no limits on the entry of humanitarian aid and blames the U.N. for delays in distributing goods entering Gaza. The U.N. says fighting, Israeli fire and chaotic security conditions have hindered delivery. Under pressure from the U.S., Israel has in recent weeks opened a pair of crossings to deliver aid into hard-hit northern Gaza and said that a series of Hamas attacks on the main crossing, Kerem Shalom, have disrupted the flow of goods.
The first cargo ship loaded with food left Cyprus last week and the cargo was transferred to a U.S. military ship, the Roy P. Benavidez, off the coast of Gaza.
Military leaders have said the deliveries of aid will begin slowly to ensure the system works. They will start with about 90 truckloads of aid a day through the sea route, and that number will quickly grow to about 150 a day. Aid agencies say that isn't enough and must be just one part of a broader Israeli effort to open land corridors.
Because land crossings could bring in all the needed aid if Israeli officials allowed it, the U.S.-built pier-and-sea route “is a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Scott Paul, an associate director of the Oxfam humanitarian organization.
Under the new sea route, humanitarian aid is dropped off in Cyprus where it will undergo inspection and security checks at Larnaca port. It is then loaded onto ships and taken about 200 miles (320 kilometers) to the large floating pier built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast.
There, the pallets are transferred onto trucks, driven onto smaller Army boats and then shuttled several miles (kilometers) to the causeway anchored to the beach. The trucks, which are being driven by personnel from another country, will go down the causeway into a secure area on land where they will drop off the aid and immediately turn around and return to the boats.
Aid groups will collect the supplies for distribution.
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Julia Frankel in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.
The image provided by U.S, Central Command, shows U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), U.S. Navy sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel Defense Forces placing the Trident Pier on the coast of Gaza Strip on Thursday, May 16, 2024. The temporary pier is part of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability. The U.S. military finished installing the floating pier on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war. (U.S. Central Command via AP)
The image provided by U.S, Central Command, shows U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), U.S. Navy sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel Defense Forces placing the Trident Pier on the coast of Gaza Strip on Thursday, May 16, 2024. The temporary pier is part of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability. The U.S. military finished installing the floating pier on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war. (U.S. Central Command via AP)
The image provided by U.S, Central Command, shows U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary), U.S. Navy sailors assigned to Amphibious Construction Battalion 1, and Israel Defense Forces placing the Trident Pier on the coast of Gaza Strip on Thursday, May 16, 2024. The temporary pier is part of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore capability. The U.S. military finished installing the floating pier on Thursday, with officials poised to begin ferrying badly needed humanitarian aid into the enclave besieged over seven months of intense fighting in the Israel-Hamas war. (U.S. Central Command via AP)
A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
A ship is seen off the coast of Gaza near a U.S.-built floating pier that will be used to facilitate aid deliveries, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Humanitarian aid is lifted by a crane operated by soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) from a Navy causeway at the Port of Ashdod, Israel, May 14, 2024. These soldiers are supporting the construction of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore system off the shore of Gaza. (Staff Sgt. Malcolm Cohens-Ashley/U.S. Army via AP)
U.S. Army soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) use a rope to stabilize humanitarian aid while it is lifted by a crane aboard the MV Roy P. Benavidez to support the Joint Logistics Over-the-shore (JLOTS) operation, in the Port of Ashdod, Israel, May 13, 2024. (Staff Sgt. Malcolm Cohens-Ashley/U.S. Army via AP)
US military says Gaza Strip pier project is completed, aid to soon flow as Israel-Hamas war rages on
US military says Gaza Strip pier project is completed, aid to soon flow as Israel-Hamas war rages on
In this image provided by the U.S. Army, soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) and sailors attached to the MV Roy P. Benavidez assemble the Roll-On, Roll-Off Distribution Facility (RRDF), or floating pier, off the shore of Gaza on April 26, 2024. The U.S. expects to have on-the-ground arrangements in Gaza ready for humanitarian workers to start delivering aid this month via a new U.S.-backed sea route for Gaza aid. An official with the U.S. Agency for International Development tells the AP that humanitarian groups expect to have their part of preparations complete by early to mid-month. (U.S. Army via AP)
