Founder’s Lessons: Sudhanshu from ChEmpower Corp
Sudhanshu shared his experiences in the semiconductor and chip manufacturing industry. From the distinctive standpoint of a novel CMP process to fitting into existing technologies, he imparted unique insights into his entrepreneurship journey.
About
Welcome to the 32nd installment of Foothill Ventures’ Lessons from Founders series. Every so often, we publish an in-depth founder interview, ranging from early-stage entrepreneurs to successful businesses. Our conversations cover their personal journeys, the lessons that shaped them, their visions for the future, and their failures. We also learn more about their companies and about the challenges they try to solve. These insights and lessons are applicable to any entrepreneur — current or future.
ChEmpower Corporation, established in 2022 in Portland, Oregon, is an innovative chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) process startup. They develop a slurry-free CMP process via a functionalized reactive pad and novel chemistries. CMP is a surface polishing process for material removal involving chemical attack and abrasive grinding during semiconductor fabrication.
Sudhanshu, CEO and Co-founder of ChEmpower, received his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the University of Florida with a specialization in semiconductors. He also founded the startup Nexplanar, which was also developing novel planarization technologies, and which was sold to Cabot Microelectronics Corporation (CMC) for $142M in 2015. Sudhanshu has extensive expertise in the startup journey and the semiconductor industry — he also happens to be one of the world’s experts in planarization. Now, he aims to transform the future of semiconductor device manufacturing, with a more sustainable and cost-effective technology.
Why we invested in ChEmpower: ChEmpower’s innovative technology can increase the CMP process throughput and reduce semiconductor defects. The current semiconductor fabrication market requires a better CMP process as foundries move toward advanced nodes. Furthermore, ChEmpower’s CMP process is environmentally friendly: Current CMP process generates a lot of slurry waste. Finally (but most importantly), the team is comprised of the world’s premier experts in this field who have also had past entrepreneurial success. Co-founder, Professor Babu Suryadevara (Babson College)is one of the most prolific researchers in the field.
What is ChEmpower Corporation’s Unique Vision?
ChEmpower is a semiconductor manufacturing technology and materials company focused on developing a holistic approach to a sustainable planarization solution for semiconductor manufacturing. An abrasive-free planarization has been the holy grail for CMP. Specifically, CMP is a key enabling technology for today’s advanced chip manufacturing. Chempower’s difference is the process of creating a solution that planarizes without using abrasives. Our technology eliminates particles so the process is defect-free, and eliminates the high costs involved in manufacturing, while at the same time being sustainable.
To understand what differentiates Chempower from other players, and why others can’t do what we do, we must take a step back to the whiteboard as we put together a solution that comprises both the chemistry and the material. You cannot have a sustainable process by thinking with one mindset alone, either the material or the chemistry. It has to be inclusive of both. So, we conceived a solution thinking from both the chemistry and the material side. For example, looking at the requirements of a sustainable CMP process, we integrated chemical functionality into the polymeric material, designed such that the material and chemistry integrated together yield a planarization process without the use of abrasives. This we call holistic, and the reason why we are differentiated.
Impact of Abrasives on the CMP Process
Looking back at CMP’s history, you will see that the trend is towards miniaturization such as reducing the size of the abrasives and making them less concentrated as chip technologies get more and more advanced. However, the truth is that you still do not want abrasives in your CMP process! With shrinking technologies, the particle size threshold is also reduced, making any residual particle potentially a killer defect. This is a big deal because if you consider a chip manufacturer at the 7nm/5nm/3nm/2nm technology nodes and beyond, any such killer defect will impact the chip yield. For instance, a 1% yield loss can imply an impact as high as $150–200 million on the net income for just a single fab on an annual basis. On a global basis (all fabs included) you can very well estimate the net income loss to be as high as $4–5 billion, from just a 1% yield impact. If you have a 2 or 3% yield loss, it is simply two or three times that number. Secondly, our technology eliminates or greatly alleviates the post-polish cleaning process, which is another opportunity created by our technology. Our product and technology create a wider opportunity, greater than just the market for pads and slurries together, making us disruptive. We are proud to be looking at semiconductor manufacturing from a disruption standpoint. That is the reason why we are in existence today.
How does ChEmpower Corp fit into the existing CMP process?
One of the key things that we did as a team was to develop a ‘plug-and-play’ technology. Being a consumables business, we wanted this to be an easy insertion into the CMP tools with only minimal change — all that is deemed positive. There is absolutely zero change to the equipment or any settings around the CMP process. The only thing we do is replace the existing consumables, namely the pad and the slurry, with our product. All in all, it is the same green button on the CMP polisher that an operator would press to run the process. Therefore, any risk associated with process change is entirely eliminated. What we provide to a customer is our proprietary process that is dropped into their existing setup.
Global Customers and Global Markets
Our customers are primarily decided by the technology node. Specifically, all advanced technology nodes at 10 nanometers or similar (even 18nm) and lower are our customers. So whether it’s a customer in Asia, in the US, or in Europe, it doesn’t matter. They are all our valued customers. Our technology serves memory and logic fabs and foundries alike, so our solution is geared towards a global market.
Favorite Aspect of Entrepreneurship
I have worked in large companies and in startups. I can say there are pros and cons on both sides, so there’s nothing good or bad. It really is what personally fits an individual. In my case, I really feel motivated and challenged working in a startup environment. Startups are all about maintaining a focus, empowering each other, and wearing multiple hats. For me, that’s a key value. We are out here tasked with an objective to meet, go out, and accomplish. There’s much more cross-functional interaction. You learn a lot, you move fast, and you get things done sooner. There’s no bureaucracy, it is just doing the right thing in the right manner and at the right time. The one important thing is having a good team, so it’s all about the people.
Staying On Top of Industry Trends
Especially with our industry and market, it is important to know that things are changing fast. When things change so fast, you need to be market savvy and have strong market intelligence. As a company, we have in our team of consultants, market experts, and advisors. We study market reports periodically and attend conferences and trade shows. Furthermore, we also have a strong technical advisory board, composed of professors and leading pioneers from the industry. Therefore, we receive a lot of feedback in real time to orient our awareness and our market strategy. In response, we position our product design to accurately and appropriately reflect the market demands. A strong and reliable market intelligence generates the requirements that feed into our product and the technology we develop.
Interviewed by Mingxiu Sun. Videographed by Hannah Wu and Heidi Lu.
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Foothill Ventures is a $150M seed-stage technology firm. We back technical founders across software, life sciences, and frontier technologies.
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