Secured tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing to accelerate the industrialization process of Micro-LED micro-display chips

36Kr learned that Micro-LED display chip solution company Nostalgia Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nostalgia Technology") announced the completion of a series of tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing. The Pre-A round was led by Shengjing Jiacheng, followed by listed company Baina Qiancheng (300291.SZ), and old shareholders continued to increase their investment; the Pre-A+ round was exclusively invested by Jiuhe Venture Capital; Yuewei Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. This round of financing will be mainly used for product research and development iterations, company operations and equipment procurement.

Nostalgia Technology is a start-up company focusing on Micro-LED micro-display chip solutions. It uses VSP (Vertically Stacked Pixels, vertically stacked pixels) technology to break through the physical limitations of miniaturization of pixels in the micro-display field and create extremely high-performance micro-display chips.

"From the product technology level, Micro-LED is mainly divided into two routes: mass transfer and monolithic integration, which are respectively aimed at the two major application directions of medium and large screen direct display and small screen projection display." Wang Yazhou, founder and CEO of Northview Technology, introduced to 36Kr: "Nosee Technology is based on the silicon-based substrate solution and integrates the more mature stacking technology in the field of Micro-LED and integrated circuits, breaking through industry barriers and realizing the unification of the two technical routes at the chip product level.one. This is also the first implementable solution in China that unifies two technical routes. Our team believes that the combination of VSP technology and large-size epitaxy will become a highly competitive solution in the Micro-LED field in the future. ”

At this stage, the Micro-LED industry still has obvious industry pain points, and performance and cost are still obstacles to the large-scale commercial implementation of Micro-LED. On the one hand, from the perspective of product performance, due to the size effect, Micro-LED has low luminous efficiency in small sizes, and the red part of the full-color display is particularly prominent. On the other hand, due to the sapphire route wafer size, warpage and other factors, Micro-LED chip yield is low, so the cost and production capacity are difficult to meet market expectations. id="1AK7NANN">The VSP technology independently developed by Nosvit Technology achieves the miniaturization of pixels by stacking multiple layers of materials in the vertical direction, and can increase the brightness of red light through stacking, fundamentally solving the main technical difficulties in the Micro-LED field. Currently, the Nosvit team is rapidly iterating the core technology to provide all-round guarantee for promoting the commercialization of Micro-LED. id="1AK7NANO">Micro-LED is a technology of LED miniaturization and matrixing, which refers to the integration on a chip.The high-density micro-sized LED array enables each pixel of the LED display to be addressed and driven to light independently. It can be regarded as a miniature version of the ordinary LED display, reducing the distance between pixels from millimeter level to micron level. Compared with various previous traditional display technologies, Micro-LED has significant advantages in all dimensions. Therefore, in the long run, Micro-LED will become the most powerful competitor in the future display industry, whether it is small-screen projection display or large-screen direct display.

Wang Yazhou said: Novovision will now focus more on near-eye display, but it will also involve the huge transfer of chips related to Micro-LED large-screen display. At present, although large-screen display also has technical challenges, its difficulty is much lower than that of near-eye display, and the industry ecology is more complete. As far as near-eye displays are concerned, compared to the 4-inch sapphire route, Novovision's WLVSP™ (Wafer Level Vertically Stacked Pixels) has been extended to the 8-inch integrated circuit process, which greatly optimizes Micro-LED yield and cost with the large-size integrated circuit process.

According to the LED Research Institute’s forecast, by 2025, the global Micro-LED market will exceed US$3.5 billion and enter a period of rapid growth. By 2027, the global Micro-LED market willThe ED market size is expected to exceed the US$10 billion mark. As high-resolution display technology continues to improve, the Micro-LED display market will continue to grow.

Nostalgia Technology was established in 2021. The core founding team comes from key talents in the semiconductor field such as Intel, China's leading LED/Micro-LED companies, and Hunan University. They all have many years of experience in the research and development and mass production of Micro-LED chips and micro-displays.

Shengjing Jiacheng Wang Xiaohui said that we are optimistic about the application prospects of Micro-LED in tens of billions of scenarios such as large display screens, wearable devices, AR/VR, and automotive HUDs in the long term. Nostalgia's VSP technology has achieved disruptive innovation in the process, with smaller size and higher luminous efficiency. We are looking forward to the application of Nostalgia's products in new market areas.

Jiuhe Venture Capital Wang Xiao said that Jiuhe has laid out the AR industry chain earlier and has always paid great attention to the upstream technological innovation in the micro-display field. Novision Technology chose to use large-size silicon-based technology and vertical pixel stacking solution, which is a brand-new technical solution that can achieve colorization of micro-displays and has the advantages of high performance, high yield, and low cost. At the same time, relying on the industry-university-research advantages of Hunan University, the team canEnough to quickly promote the commercialization of Micro-LED. We firmly believe that Novi can become a leader in the Micro-LED industry and bring new changes.

Baina Qiancheng (300291.SZ) Li Qian said that Micro-LED technology has broad market space in the fields of AR/VR and automotive HUD with its advantages of low power consumption, high brightness, small size and easy portability. After many years of research and development and technology accumulation, the core team of Novos Technology independently developed the stack design of VSP technology to be more feasible for mass production than other monolithic integration solutions. The company is willing and confident to work with Nostalgia Technologies to jointly promote related technologies from laboratories to industrialization, realize the transition from technical theory to large-scale mass production, and help the rapid development of the domestic Metaverse and VR/AR industries.