SCI Semiconductor Raises £5M to Scale Memory-Safe Chip Production

SCI Semiconductor, a company headquartered in Sheffield, has raised £5 million to speed up production of its memory-safe computer chips, according to Tech.eu.

The round, which the company said was heavily oversubscribed, was led by two fund managers connected to the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II: PXN Ventures and Mercia Ventures. These manage NPIF II - PXN Equity Finance and NPIF II - Mercia Equity Finance respectively. Additional backing came from cyber security seed investor Osney Capital, US-based Black Opal Ventures and private investors.

SCI describes its product as the world's first memory-safe computer chip. Memory safety is a factor in roughly 70 per cent of cyberattacks, according to Tech.eu. Conventional software permits free access to memory, which offers developers flexibility but also opens vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit. Coding errors can also crash entire systems, as happened during the 2024 CrowdStrike outages. SCI's approach builds security into the computer architecture itself, splitting memory into trusted compartments and restricting access to them.