Nearfield Instruments, a corporations in advanced semiconductor 3D metrology and process control, said on the 22nd that it raised $380 million in a series D round. In this round, Nearfield's valuation was set at $1.6 billion, marking the largest fundraising on record among Dutch deep-tech corporations.
The round was led by new investor Fidelity Management & Research Company. Existing investors Temasek, Walden Catalyst Ventures, Innovation Industries, M&G, and Invest-NL also participated, and the Qatar Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth funds of Qatar, joined as a new investor. Existing investors including TNO Ventures and ING also took part in the oversubscribed round.
Nearfield plans to use the funds to shorten its innovation roadmap and expand manufacturing capacity. It will establish application centers of excellence worldwide and strengthen its global customer support organization, while also expanding joint research and development with major semiconductor manufacturers.
With the spread of AI technology, the semiconductor industry faces the task of boosting computing performance while reducing energy consumption. Nearfield's metrology and inspection solutions provide high-precision, high-throughput measurement technologies that support advanced process control, Production yield improvement, and stable mass production. In particular, it holds core metrology technologies required for next-generation processes such as high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet (High-NA EUV), gate-all-around (GAA), complementary field-effect transistor (CFET) architectures, and 3D integration based on hybrid bonding.
Hamed Sadeghian, Nearfield co-founder and CEO, said, "The successful close of this funding round is an important inflection point in Nearfield's growth journey," and noted, "It shows that the strategic importance of metrology and inspection technologies is growing in the era of AI-driven semiconductor innovation." He added, "Nearfield is no longer an emerging corporations. We are firmly established in the market, scaling up, and building a global technology corporations that leads the industry."
Niranjan Sirdeshpande, head of the M&G Investments Catalyst institutional sector, said, "As global semiconductor demand accelerates, the ability to manufacture chips with atom-level precision is becoming a strategic imperative," and explained, "Nearfield's metrology platform directly addresses the process control challenges advanced chipmakers face as they move to next-generation nodes and 3D integration architectures."
Son Young-kwon, founding managing partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, added, "Nearfield operates at the intersection of two industry shifts: the rapid expansion of AI and the transition to increasingly complex 3D semiconductor architectures," and said, "As the semiconductor industry enters a new phase, advanced metrology and inspection will become key enablers of next-generation chip innovation."