A UK chipmaker, headquartered in Cambridge with factories in County Durham, that makes ultra-thin flexible microchips called FlexICs.
Pragmatic Semiconductor makes a different kind of microchip. Most chips are made on rigid slices of silicon, but Pragmatic builds its FlexICs from thin-film transistors on a non-silicon base, so the finished chip is only about 30 microns thick and can bend. That lets a chip be put on a curved surface, inside packaging or on a label. The company points to uses such as tracking goods through a supply chain, checking that medicines are genuine, and one day flexible medical devices. It also sells Fab-as-a-Service, where other companies design chips and Pragmatic manufactures them. The company says its process uses far less energy and water than a silicon factory.
Pragmatic was founded in Cambridge in 2010 by academic Richard Price and entrepreneur Scott White, growing out of university research. Its chief executive, David Moore, describes the aim as enabling "item-level intelligence in virtually any object on the planet", meaning everyday items could carry a small, cheap chip. The company has also worked with Arm on research, including a flexible 32-bit Arm microprocessor published in the journal Nature in 2021, and with partners such as Unilever and the University of Manchester on other experiments.
The company is split between Cambridge and the North East. Its head office is in Cambridge, and its manufacturing is in County Durham, where it has worked with the Centre for Process Innovation at NETPark in Sedgefield since the early 2010s. A recent article describes a 55,000 square foot former factory at Meadowfield, outside Durham, now used as a volume chip plant. In March 2024 HRH The Princess Royal opened Pragmatic Park, which houses the UK's first 300mm wafer fab. The company says the Durham site has room for several more production lines.
A June 2026 article puts the workforce at about 350 people, many with PhDs, along with technicians and apprentices. It says the youngest team member, in Cambridge, is 21. It also tells the story of Heather Flint, who moved from Lincoln to study in Newcastle, joined Pragmatic, and within about three years went from device development to lead design scientist and then project management. She describes the work as "something new every day". The company stresses keeping skilled people in the North East. These are the company's and the press's own descriptions.
A chipmaker like this employs device scientists, process and manufacturing engineers, chip designers, software and test engineers, technicians who run the cleanroom, and project, supply-chain and customer teams. Its board includes industry figures such as chair Peter Herweck, formerly of Schneider Electric and Aveva, and Murthy Renduchintala, formerly of Intel. For a student, that mix of physics, chemistry, electronics and engineering shows how many different subjects feed into one factory.
Website: www.pragmaticsemi.com
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