minds.ai Raises Seed Funding to Optimize Semiconductor Manufacturing Operations
minds.ai Enables More Semiconductors to Be Produced Faster
With Less Waste at a Lower Cost
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – minds.ai announced today that it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding to drive innovation in the application of AI in semiconductor manufacturing. The funding was led by Monta Vista Capital, with other investors, including Momenta, joining the round as part of the financing, minds.ai welcomes Venkatesh Shukla from Monta Vista Capital and Michael Dolbec from Momenta to its board of directors.
The CHIPS Act in the U.S. and the European Chips Act have highlighted the importance of semiconductor manufacturing as the most critical of all the smart manufacturing industry segments. McKinsey & Company predicts that semiconductor manufacturing will become a trillion-dollar industry by 2030. It’s also one of the most complex manufacturing processes in the world, requiring hundreds of process steps in hundreds of tools – with many dozens of wafer lots in flow at any given time. Conventional algorithms are unable to perform the scheduling, prediction and meeting of time constraints between steps in real-time across the entire fab. That leads to the need for human intervention, but human capacity to make informed decisions in a complex and rapidly changing environment is limited, resulting in inefficiencies. Given the investment of tens of billions of dollars in modern fabs, every efficiency improvement has a significant impact on the bottom line.
To address the industry’s challenges, minds.ai is bringing its proven experience in applying deep learning to solve business and technical problems to dramatically improve the efficiency and productivity of large-scale semiconductor manufacturing processes. The minds.ai MaestroTM end-to-end solution integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, improving the efficiency and productivity of fab manufacturing processes using supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and generative AI.
- Improved targeted key performance indicators: General managers and data science managers in semiconductor fabs will gain efficiencies in areas including throughput, fault detection and classification, preventive maintenance planning, reduction of wafer scraps and prediction of wafer lot processing times.
- Faster, more productive planning and investment: Business operations professionals can do capacity planning, product mix allocation, and capital investment planning and optimization quantitatively and more rapidly than with spreadsheets alone.
- Deep learning tools and established AI expertise: C-suite leaders can leverage minds.ai’s technology to assist with high-value programs ranging from product mix planning to demand forecasting and training of operators.
Venkatesh Shukla, Founder and General Partner of Monta Vista Capital, said: “Increasing the efficiency of semiconductor manufacturing operations is one of the most challenging programs in the industry. Traditional approaches don’t suffice and humans alone cannot make informed decisions using them. This is an intractable problem and minds.ai has created a solution portfolio with proven results for this sector.”
Michael Dolbec, Managing Partner of Momenta, said: “With our focus on smart manufacturing, Momenta sought an investment to apply AI to semiconductor operations. We’ve found exactly that in the highly skilled team and groundbreaking product suite of minds.ai Maestro.”
Sumit Sanyal, CEO of minds.ai, said: “We’re on a mission to completely transform the semiconductor industry through the application of various deep learning techniques. These technologies are key to solving some of the biggest pain points in this sector, with the ability to deliver results that existing tools could never achieve. The investment from Monta Vista Capital and Momenta will help accelerate our journey.”
Additional resources: Listen to Momenta’s Podcast “The Digital Thread” featuring Sumit Sanyal:
About minds.ai
minds.ai dramatically improves the efficiency and productivity of semiconductor manufacturing processes. This includes enabling more semiconductor wafers to be produced faster with less waste at a lower cost, reducing the number of scraped wafers, and speeding up the design and planning processes. Founded in 2014, minds.ai is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Amsterdam and Bangalore. More information is available at https://minds.ai/
