Seven steps from breakthrough to scale: the ingredients behind Pragmatic Semiconductor’s success

Pragmatic Semiconductor’s journey from early innovation to world‑leading, high‑volume semiconductor manufacturing offers a powerful example of how those decisions can come together. At the heart of that journey sits a long‑term partnership with CPI, which played a critical enabling role by helping Pragmatic turn ambition into scalable, commercial reality. 

Together, our success story highlights the ingredients required to scale breakthrough innovation in a complex and strategically important industry. 

Ingredient one: a problem worth solving

Pragmatic Semiconductor was founded to address a structural challenge in the semiconductor industry. Traditional silicon chips, while powerful, are rigid, costly and resource intensive to manufacture, limiting where intelligence can be deployed and slowing the next wave of connected products. 

Pragmatic’s answer was a fundamentally different approach. Its proprietary flexible integrated circuits, FlexICs, are ultra‑thin, robust and low‑cost, designed to embed intelligence directly into everyday items. By embedding FlexICs into smart packaging, consumer products, and wearable healthcare applications data can be created, captured and acted upon throughout a product’s lifecycle.

This delivers powerful brand engagement opportunities with consumers, driving loyalty and preference, supporting recycling and circular economy initiatives, and cultivating trust by providing proof of authentication, without impacting on brand aesthetics.

Crucially, Pragmatic’s ambition extended beyond invention. As the company set out to develop its innovative semiconductors, it sought to create a manufacturing model capable of delivering this technology at scale: affordably, sustainably and at pace.

Ingredient two: the right partner at the right moment

For many deep‑tech companies, the most challenging phase lies between early proof‑of‑concept and manufacturable reality. This is where promising technologies often stall – not because the science fails, but because scaling happens at the wrong time or without the right support. 

From its earliest stages, Pragmatic recognised the importance of finding a partner that understood this transition. CPI joined the journey as a long‑term innovation partner providing facilities, technical expertise and manufacturing insight to help de‑risk development and shape a scalable production approach. 

As David Moore, CEO of Pragmatic Semiconductor, explains: ​“I think CPI certainly has played a key role in us being able to develop the technology, build on the foundations, and develop the proof points to be able to move from that start‑up phase into that scale‑up phase.” 

This collaboration allowed Pragmatic to iterate, test and refine its manufacturing processes before committing to volume, ensuring that scale, when it came, would be sustainable and repeatable.

Ingredient three: innovation clusters that accelerate progress

Partnerships do not exist in isolation. Pragmatic’s collaboration with CPI was strengthened by its location within a wider innovation ecosystem, including NETPark in the North East of England. 

Innovation clusters like NETPark play a vital role in enabling scale‑up, bringing together research, manufacturing expertise, infrastructure and talent in close proximity. This environment accelerates collaboration, shortens development cycles and lowers the barriers between innovation and industrialisation. 

For Pragmatic, operating within this ecosystem meant access not only to CPI’s capabilities, but also to a network of skills and partners that supported rapid learning and progress, reinforcing the value of place as an ingredient in success. 

Ingredient four: knowing when to scale, and when not to

In semiconductor manufacturing, scale amplifies both success and failure. Scaling too early can lock in inefficiencies and destroy capital; scaling too late can mean missing the market altogether. 

Through its partnership with CPI, Pragmatic took a disciplined approach to moving from low‑TRL invention toward manufacturing readiness. By working with CPI, industry‑standard techniques could be adapted to support Pragmatic’s new technologies, enabling processes to be stress‑tested, yields improved and repeatability proven ahead of volume expansion. 

This careful sequencing ensured that when Pragmatic did scale, it did so from a position of strength, with manufacturing systems, sustainability principles and commercial credibility already in place. 

Ingredient five: investment that follows readiness

Investor confidence is rarely driven by ambition alone. In deep‑tech manufacturing, it follows evidence; proof that a technology can be produced reliably, sustainably and at scale. 

By de‑risking manufacturing and demonstrating commercial readiness, Pragmatic was able to attract increasing levels of private investment over time. This culminated in a landmark Series D funding round in 2023, raising £182 million – the largest European venture investment ever secured by a European semiconductor company, bringing Pragmatic’s total investment to $388 million. 

This funding represented validation of foundations already built and enabled Pragmatic to accelerate expansion with confidence. 

Ingredient six: place, purpose and UK leadership

In 2024, Pragmatic took a defining step with the opening of Pragmatic Park in Durham, in the North East of England. Built on a 59,000‑square‑metre brownfield site, the facility is home to the UK’s first 300mm semiconductor fabrication lines and one of the most advanced manufacturing sites of its kind in the country. 

The decision to scale manufacturing in the UK reflects a clear commitment to domestic capability, supply‑chain resilience and regional growth. Pragmatic Park has created high‑value jobs, attracting specialist talent to the North East and strengthening the UK’s position in a strategically critical industry. 

Innovation clusters again played a role here, with proximity to NETPark and CPI reinforcing the region’s ability to support advanced manufacturing at scale. 

Ingredient seven: sustainability as a differentiator

Sustainability has been embedded into Pragmatic’s manufacturing approach from the outset. Compared with traditional silicon fabrication, FlexIC production uses significantly less energy and water, and fewer hazardous chemicals, offering a lower‑impact alternative without compromising performance. 

As environmental considerations increasingly shape policy, funding and procurement decisions, this sustainable‑by‑design approach has become a differentiator, aligning Pragmatic’s growth with net zero ambitions and responsible industrial development. 

Real‑world impact at scale

Today, Pragmatic’s FlexIC technology is enabling intelligence to be embedded into millions of everyday products. By bridging the physical and digital worlds, it supports smarter, more resilient supply chains and a new generation of Internet of Things applications – also known as IoT or ​“smart objects” – across consumer, industrial and healthcare sectors. 

This is no longer a future vision, but a commercial reality, delivered at volume from UK‑based manufacturing. 

What this proves

Pragmatic Semiconductor’s journey demonstrates that scaling deep‑tech innovation is not about a single leap, but about assembling the right ingredients in the right order: a meaningful problem, disciplined scale‑up, sustained investment, strong partnerships and the right ecosystem. 

For CPI, the collaboration stands as clear evidence that our long‑term innovation partnership model works. Success is not measured by dependency, but by graduation, enabling companies to move confidently into the market, fully equipped to scale. 

Together, we have shown what is possible when innovation, manufacturing expertise and strategic timing align, strengthening UK leadership in advanced, sustainable semiconductor manufacturing, and providing a blueprint for future scale‑ups to follow.