UK-based flexible electronics developer Pragmatic Printing, has closed a £5.4m ($8.1m) funding round backed by semiconductor company ARM Holdings.
Cambridge Innovation Capital, the venture fund of Cambridge University, led the round, which also included undisclosed existing shareholders.
Pragmatic produces flexible, cost-effective, printed electronic logic circuits that can be incorporated into a range of products, fulfilling functions including enabling intelligent packaging or securely authenticating documents.
The company previously announced development projects with consumer goods company Procter & Gamble, security printing company De La Rue, and greeting cards company Hallmark. It will use the funds to scale up its production capacity to 100 million flexible circuits by the end of 2015 and to hire more staff.
Scott White, chief executive of Pragmatic, said: “We have become accustomed to silicon chips being incorporated into high-value documents such as passports and credit cards, but there are limitations to how robustly and cost-effectively this can be done.
“Our technology platform creates a microcircuit thinner than a human hair that can be easily embedded in any flexible surface.”