NextGO Epi raises €2M pre-Seed to build Europe's Gallium Oxide power semiconductor chain

NextGO Epi, a Berlin-based semiconductor materials company founded in 2025 as a spin-out of the Leibniz Institute for Crystal Growth (IKZ), has raised €2 million in a pre-Seed round — described as its first institutional backing — led by Vireo Ventures, with participation from Ultratech Capital Partners and IBB Ventures, plus an angel investment from Boris Habets. The company was co-founded by Dr. Ta-Shun Chou (CEO), Dr. Andreas Popp, and Dr. Andreas Fiedler; Dr. Jochen Linck, former COO of Aixtron, serves as operating partner. The capital goes to product development, team growth, and commercial market development.

Gallium Oxide: the next material for power

Power semiconductors sit at the core of the energy transition. Every EV drivetrain, every grid inverter for solar and wind, every fast-charging station, and every switch-mode power supply in an AI data centre depends on a device that can switch electrical current at high voltage with minimal energy loss.

Silicon is the incumbent material for this — functional, manufacturable, and cheap, but hitting its physical limits. Silicon carbide (SiC) improved on silicon for high-voltage applications and is now the standard for automotive power electronics. The material case for Gallium Oxide (Ga₂O₃) goes one step further: its theoretical breakdown electric field is four to eight times higher than SiC, which translates to devices that can handle significantly higher voltages with lower on-resistance, running cooler and more efficiently.

The obstacle has always been producibility. Growing high-quality Ga₂O₃ crystals at the consistency required for semiconductor manufacturing is technically demanding. NextGO Epi produces epitaxial wafers (epiwafers) — the substrate on which power device manufacturers build their transistors and diodes. The company's claim to be Europe's only Ga₂O₃ epiwafer producer at this stage is credible: the supply chain for this material is nascent globally, with a small number of Japanese and American research groups among the only other sources.

Why Europe, why now

The IKZ spin-out origin matters. The Leibniz Institute for Crystal Growth is one of Europe's foremost crystal growth research facilities; Drs. Chou, Popp, and Fiedler are researchers who built the scientific foundation at IKZ before commercialising it through NextGO Epi. Dr. Jochen Linck's involvement as operating partner is a deliberate addition of semiconductor industry commercialisation experience — Aixtron, where he served as COO, is a major supplier of metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) systems used in compound semiconductor manufacturing.

"Gallium oxide is to power electronics what silicon was to compute, and Europe should own that value chain," Chou said. "We're building the material layer that makes the next energy revolution possible, and we're building it in Europe."

The investment from IBB Ventures — the Berlin Investment Bank's fund — alongside Vireo Ventures and Ultratech Capital Partners reflects Berlin's continued positioning as a deep-tech semiconductor hub, building on a cluster that includes Infineon's Berlin operations and multiple university research groups.

The 18-month test

NextGO Epi's near-term task is producing epiwafers at commercial-grade quality and consistency: wafers that device manufacturers can take into their processes without yield surprises. This is not a trivial step from research to manufacturing — crystal growth at commercial consistency requires process repeatability that laboratory production rarely demands.

If quality samples can be demonstrated, the company faces a second challenge: engaging device manufacturers who are at early stages of Ga₂O₃ device development, and whose own commercialisation timelines may not align with NextGO Epi's supply readiness. The materials and device sides of the Ga₂O₃ ecosystem need to develop in parallel. The €2 million pre-Seed funds the materials side; the device side timeline is largely outside NextGO Epi's control.