Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies

Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies is a UCL spinout founded in 2017 by Professor Tony Kenyon, Dr. Adnan Mehonic, and Dr. Wing Ng, built to commercialise a decade of research into silicon oxide memristor technology at UCL's Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. The problem the company addresses is fundamental to the future of computing: embedded Flash memory — the dominant non-volatile memory technology used in microcontrollers, IoT devices, and edge AI chips — is reaching the physical limits of its scalability. Flash cannot be shrunk further without losing reliability, and its incompatibility with modern CMOS manufacturing processes means it cannot be integrated directly onto the same chip as the processor. This forces chip designers to use more expensive, more power-hungry two-chip architectures, or to forego local memory storage entirely — a bottleneck that is increasingly constraining the development of intelligent, autonomous, and energy-efficient devices.

Intrinsic's solution is a proprietary form of resistive random-access memory (RRAM), known as a memristor, based on silicon oxide (SiOx) — the same material already used throughout standard CMOS semiconductor fabrication. Because the material is already present in conventional chip manufacturing, Intrinsic's memory can be integrated directly onto chips using existing foundry processes, without requiring new materials, new equipment, or specialist manufacturing expertise. The result is embedded non-volatile memory that reads data 10x to 100x faster, writes 1000x faster, and consumes dramatically less power than Flash, all while being manufacturable at scale using the industry's standard toolchain. The company aims to license its RRAM IP to semiconductor manufacturers and fabless chip designers targeting edge AI, IoT, and microcontroller applications — markets that collectively represent tens of billions of addressable opportunity in the global embedded memory space.

Intrinsic raised a £1.35 million seed round in 2021 led by the UCL Technology Fund and IP Group, enabling a partnership with imec — the Belgian semiconductor research foundry — to transfer the technology to a standard CMOS process on 300mm wafers and demonstrate switching behaviour at 50nm node sizes. In 2023, the company secured £7 million in a Series A led by Octopus Ventures, with continued backing from IP Group, the UCL Technology Fund, and £1 million from Innovate UK, to expand its engineering team and accelerate commercialisation. Intrinsic is developing RRAM-based embedded non-volatile memory that could become the backbone for the next generation of edge and IoT computing.