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Press releases - November 2, 2021

Pragmatic Semiconductor announces appointment of Birger Steen to its Board of Directors

Chair of Nordic Semiconductor joins to support significant growth phase

Pragmatic Semiconductor, a world leader in flexible electronics, is proud to announce that Birger Steen has joined its Board of Directors. Birger is Board Chair of multiple technology businesses including Internet of Things pioneer and global Bluetooth LE market leader Nordic Semiconductor ASA, business network innovator Pagero AB, and German care technology leader myneva GmbH.

Birger is also a Thematic Partner at Summa Equity’s Tech-enabled Transformation team, where he invests and works with companies that deploy technology to solve global challenges. Previously he was CEO at Parallels, Inc. and held senior roles at Microsoft Corporation including Vice President of Worldwide SMB and Distribution, and General Manager of Microsoft Russia and Microsoft Norway.

In a recent announcement, Pragmatic unveiled plans for its second FlexLogic® fabrication line, located in the North East of England, to expand capacity in order to meet the rapidly growing demand for its ultra-low-cost flexible integrated circuits. This expansion is supported by $80 million funding, which will also allow the team to more than double in size over the next 12 months.

“We are delighted to welcome Birger to the board. He brings an in-depth understanding of the global semiconductor market, and his wide experience in leading advanced technology companies will be crucial during our next stage of growth,” said Scott White, CEO of Pragmatic Semiconductor. “Birger also joins a select group of individual investors in Pragmatic who, along with our institutional and corporate shareholders, allow us to continue building the business as a major independent semiconductor foundry, extending electronics into markets previously not possible with traditional silicon chips.”

Erik Langaker, independent Chair of the Board, added: “Having known Birger and followed his career closely for more than 30 years, I am confident that his involvement and investment in Pragmatic will help guide the team through this significant period of development. His extensive operational and international background will enable him to work closely with the management to refine their strategic roadmap and build a strong presence in the semiconductor community.”

“Pragmatic has a truly disruptive vision for their innovative flexible chips,” said Birger Steen. “Their strategy for geographically distributed semiconductor fabrication offers customers the ability to take control of critical supply chains while also quickly responding to market trends and creating new, innovative solutions that solve some of the biggest global problems we are facing today. I am excited to be joining the board at such an important stage in the company’s growth.”

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About Pragmatic Semiconductor 

Pragmatic Semiconductor is a leader in semiconductor innovation, creating ultra low cost, ultra thin, flexible integrated circuits (‘electronic chips’).

Pragmatic’s chip is produced without silicon, using thin-film semiconductors to create flexible integrated circuits that are thinner than a human hair, and are significantly cheaper and faster to produce than silicon chips. This provides a compelling alternative for many mainstream electronics applications, as well as enabling new applications not possible with silicon.

Pragmatic’s chips can be embedded into almost anything, bringing connectivity and intelligence to everyday objects. Example applications include radio frequency identification (RFID) and near field communications (NFC) giving objects unique digital identities as well as enabling objects to interact with their environment. This has benefits across the entire product lifecycle, including inventory reduction, traceability, counterfeit detection, proof of provenance, and customer interaction. Pragmatic’s technology can also be used to help reduce food waste, improve the return and recycling of singleuse packaging, and enable item-level traceability within a universal system for recapture, sorting, cleaning, and return.

Our foundry service uniquely allows agile hardware design, exponentially accelerating solution development and time-to-market. Examples include proprietary RFID protocols, time/temperature indicators, fingerprint sensors, wearable smart patches for healthcare, flexible display drivers, and novel microprocessor architectures.

We also offer a Fab-as-a-Service model that enables secure, dependable, localised semiconductor supply through manufacturing directly on a customer’s site. This highly scalable distributed production allows cost effective, high-volume fabrication of flexible integrated circuits.

Pragmatic is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with our first fab operating in Sedgefield, and a second fab under construction at our new 15-acre Pragmatic Park site in Durham.

For more information please contact pr@pragmaticsemi.com

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