Nantero raises $21M for ultra-dense carbon nanotube NRAM memory, brings total raised to date to $110M+
Nantero has raised $21 million in funding for its carbon nanotube memory devices, which are an alternative to mainstream semiconductor chips. — The Woburn, Mass.-based company makes …
Context & Ripple Effects
In late 2016, Nantero pulled in $21 million for NRAM — memory built from carbon nanotubes rather than the silicon structures behind mainstream DRAM and flash — pushing its lifetime fundraising past $110 million. The round matters because it kept alive one of the longest-running bets that a non-silicon material could displace incumbent memory at commercial scale.
That bet did not stay lonely. Four years later Antaios raised $11M for SOT-MRAM aimed at the same embedded-memory and SRAM-cache sockets, Dresden-based Ferroelectric Memory later drew a €100M round for energy-saving memory chips, and the US DOD put CHIPS Act money into hybrid gain cell memory that pairs DRAM density with SRAM speed — a steady drip of capital into every niche where conventional memory falls short.
First-order effects
- The $21M funds Nantero's push to move carbon nanotube NRAM from lab material toward manufacturable product, with cumulative backing now above $110M signaling investor patience with a long development cycle.
- Chipmakers evaluating next-generation embedded and standalone memory gain one more qualified candidate beyond MRAM and ferroelectric approaches already in the pipeline.
Second-order effects
- Alternative-memory startups compete for the same sockets, so Antaios's SOT-MRAM and Ferroelectric Memory's energy-saving chips become direct substitutes Nantero must out-engineer on density, endurance, and cost per bit.
- Incumbent DRAM and flash suppliers face a growing field of challengers at their margins — embedded non-volatile memory and low-power cache first — pressuring them to respond with their own emerging-memory roadmaps.
Third-order effects
- If the funding pattern holds, 'memory' fragments from a two-technology market (DRAM plus NAND) into a portfolio of application-specific technologies, with public money — as in the CHIPS Act gain-cell grant — joining venture capital in picking winners.
- Carbon nanotubes themselves are being validated as more than a research curiosity, with C12's later carbon-nanotube quantum computing raise showing the material attracting capital across multiple compute categories.
The trend: Venture and state capital are steadily funding alternatives to silicon DRAM and flash, betting that specialized memories will carve up what is today a consolidated market.