After winning this year’s Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest, SixLine Semiconductor CEO Katy Jinkins is focused on proving the company’s technology and building industry relationships.
This Middleton-based company is developing advanced electronics components using carbon nanotubes — very small materials that can be incorporated into wireless devices and used for next-generation computing.
Jinkins, the company’s co-founder and co-inventor of the technology, beat out a dozen other finalists during the recent Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference in Milwaukee, hosted by the Wisconsin Technology Council. In an interview yesterday, she said the most helpful part of the experience was getting feedback from the judges through multiple rounds of the competition.
“I think it was just a really great platform and way to bring more awareness to carbon nanotubes and carbon nanotube electronics, but also just to the really high-quality research and technology that’s being developed in Wisconsin,” she told WisBusiness.com.
Going forward, Jinkins said she’ll be working on strengthening and establishing more relationships with big companies in this field. The business is currently finalizing two evaluation contracts with two of those companies, she said, and seeking feedback from potential customers.
Meanwhile, SixLine Semiconductor is raising a pre-seed funding round targeting between $750,000 and $1 million. The business has already raised $475,000, Jinkins said.
“That funding will be very vital in allowing us to hire people outside of this core team that’s really been involved since the beginning,” she said, adding the company is looking to establish a facility of its own and demonstrate the “reliability and uniformity of electronic devices based on nanotubes” at larger industry scales.
She also praised the entire team at SixLine Semiconductor, emphasizing the key role they’ve played in both the competition and in growing the company.
“We have a really strong team, and I’m just really excited to be able to work with such great people, to continue moving forward our vision of commercialized nanotube-based electronics,” she said.
See more on the competition here: https://www.wisbusiness.com/2023/sixline-semiconductor-wins-2023-govs-biz-plan-contest/
See more on the company: https://www.sixlinesemi.com/
–By Alex Moe
