SCI Semiconductor Raises £5M to Scale Memory-Safe Chips
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SCI Semiconductor, a semiconductor company headquartered in Sheffield, England, has raised £5 million to speed up production of what it describes as the world’s first memory-safe computer chip. The round was announced on September 10, 2026.
The heavily oversubscribed financing was led by Mercia Ventures and PXN Ventures, both fund managers for the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II. Osney Capital, a specialist cybersecurity seed investor, US-based Black Opal Ventures, and private investors also took part. The round follows a £2.5 million investment led by NPIF II and Mercia Ventures a year ago.
SCI has already fabricated its first devices and holds orders worth more than £2 million. It has won government contracts totaling £7.7 million and agreed partnerships with Google Research and Microsoft.
Memory safety is the central factor in roughly 70 percent of cyber attacks. Conventional software allows memory to be accessed freely, which gives developers flexibility but opens holes for attackers and means a single coding flaw can take down an entire system, as happened in the 2024 CrowdStrike outages. SCI builds the protection into the chip architecture itself, dividing memory into trusted compartments and tightly controlling access. Its ICENI range is the first line of chips based on CHERI, a government-backed framework for memory-safe computing, and the company has been named a core supplier in the UK government’s Accelerated CHERI Adoption Programme.
The timing matters. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has warned that software patching alone may not be enough protection and is urging companies to adopt memory-safe technology, and SCI’s chip will help users meet many reporting requirements under the European Cyber Resilience Act, which takes effect in September.
SCI Semiconductor was founded in 2022 by industry veteran Haydn Povey, Silicon Valley executive Krishna Anne, and Microsoft Research specialist Dr David Chisnall, joined by academics from the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester. The company employs 35 people across Sheffield and an office in Cambridge and plans to add 15 more jobs in the next year. Its chips are designed and packaged in the UK, with fabrication in Germany.
Security vendors and consultancies working with critical infrastructure, defense, and medical customers can get verified contacts at newly funded cybersecurity companies each week through Cyber Security Lead Generation.
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