Neuron IP opens a semiconductor R&D center in Barcelona

The Barcelona ecosystem linked to semiconductors continues to strengthen and add new players. The company Neuron IP has decided to locate its first R&D center for these materials in Europe in the Catalan capital, in a project in which it will invest 10 million euros.

The Canadian company expects the new center to generate about thirty jobs in the first year, and then expand the workforce to one hundred employees over the next few years. The center will be located in the K2M building of the Campus Nord of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), which will become the company's main hub outside North America.

The hub will include a design center and a testing laboratory. These spaces will specialize in the development of silicon interfaces and capsules that allow integrating various semiconductor chips on a single advanced board, using a technology known as chiplet.

The company, which has had the support of Acció to establish itself in Catalonia, is positioned as one of the fastest-growing engineering companies in the North American market. It does so from its headquarters in Toronto, founded in 2020, and with centers in North America, to which Barcelona is now added.

The technologies it will develop from the Catalan capital are critical for applications in growing fields such as artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, data centers, automotive, and wireless communications infrastructure, in which Barcelona also wants to position itself as key in the international ecosystem.

Thus, projects like this allow "scaling Catalonia's position in the field of semiconductors," as defended by the Secretary of Business and Competitiveness of the Generalitat, Jaume Baró. The CEO of Acció also highlighted that "the fact that an international company chooses Barcelona places Catalonia among the leading territories in the value chain of this industry."

For the choice of Barcelona as the headquarters for the new center, the company has taken into account that the city "has a strong global reputation for developing new technologies and possesses the infrastructure, talent, and ecosystem to enable the sustainable growth of startups," according to Neuron IP founder and CEO, Saman Sadr. "The Catalan capital offers a unique combination of innovation and culture, between academia, industry, and the support of the Government, which we value greatly," he remarked.

The company collaborates with the UPC for the search for highly qualified talent specializing in areas such as silicon interfaces and chiplet design. "This collaboration reinforces Neuron IP's commitment to nurturing local talent," Sadr remarked. In this regard, the Vice-Rector for Transfer, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at UPC, Climent Molins, emphasized that "the consolidation of a research and design office of the company on the UPC North Campus implies a substantial contribution to the Catalan ecosystem of semiconductors and microelectronics".

So much so that the company will not only operate in collaboration with the UPC but will also interrelate with research groups from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the National Microelectronics Center (CNM), integrating into an ecosystem linked to semiconductors that continues to grow in Barcelona and its surroundings.