Bluehill VC, a frontier-tech-focused VC fund, has led a ₹10.2 crore seed round in Makr Microsystems, a semiconductor metrology company, with participation from Artha Venture Fund.
Makr is developing technology that allows chipmakers to see and measure what is happening beneath the surface of a chip at the nanoscale. The seed round will support the company’s continued technology development, customer validation and progression toward commercial deployment.
Manu Iyer, General Partner, Bluehill VC, says, “We are excited about companies that sit deeper in critical technology value chains. Makr is solving a difficult problem in semiconductor manufacturing at a time when the industry is moving toward increasingly complex architectures. We believe this is a global opportunity, and that world-class semiconductor equipment and technology can be built from India.”
For Bluehill, this is an important part of the opportunity. The Fund is looking beyond the most visible parts of the semiconductor value chain to back frontier technologies that can become critical infrastructure for the industry. Makr is one such bet, led by Ashwin Lal, who brings experience across semiconductor technology and scientific instrumentation. Ashwin holds an M.Sc. in Physics from IIT Kanpur and a Ph.D. in Microtechnology from EPFL, and has previously founded Shilps Sciences and worked as an engineer at Applied Materials.
The broader team brings expertise across semiconductor metrology, atomic force microscopy, scanning probe systems, MEMS, embedded systems and scientific instrumentation.
Ashwin Lal, Founder, Makr Microsystems, says, “Semiconductor manufacturing is creating structures that are increasingly difficult to see and measure. As architectures move into the third dimension, understanding what is happening beneath the surface becomes critical to improving yield. Our goal is to make the subsurface measurable, non-destructively and at the resolution the next generation of chipmaking demands.”
As semiconductor devices become smaller and more complex, more of the structures that matter are moving below the surface. Advanced packaging, chiplets and 3D architectures increasingly rely on interfaces and connections that can be buried beneath multiple layers of material.
Being able to see and measure these structures is critical for understanding how a device has been manufactured, identifying defects and improving yield. Today’s metrology tools are highly sophisticated, but different techniques involve trade-offs around resolution, depth, speed and whether the sample needs to be damaged or prepared for inspection. Makr is developing a new approach to this problem.
Makr’s core technology is Acoustic Atomic Force Microscopy (AAFM), which combines atomic force microscopy with acoustic sensing to access information beneath the surface of semiconductor structures. The technology uses acoustic signals to gather information that conventional surface-based techniques can struggle to access. Makr is developing this into a platform for high-resolution, non-destructive subsurface measurement.
The initial applications include advanced packaging, hybrid bonding, buried interfaces, chiplet interconnects and defect detection: areas where understanding what is happening beneath the surface is becoming increasingly important.
The opportunity for Makr extends beyond India. The same shift toward more complex semiconductor architectures is taking place across the world’s leading semiconductor ecosystems, creating demand for better ways to inspect and characterise increasingly sophisticated devices.
For Bluehill, this investment is a bet on the deeper layers of the semiconductor stack and on the opportunity to build globally relevant deeptech from India. The fund recently announced the final close of its maiden fund at ₹400 crore.