Pixel-Flo

Investor: Northern Gritstone

Sheffield-based deeptech semiconductor company Pixel-Flo has successfully closed an oversubscribed £5.25 million Seed funding round led by Northern Gritstone. Summary of transaction details: Value: £5.25 million Seed capital (featuring a £2.5 million cornerstone investment from Northern Gritstone). Sector: DeepTech & AI / Semiconductor Manufacturing / Hardware. Advisor / Corporate History: Developed out of the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Sheffield and accelerated through the NG Studios deeptech venture building program. Key Entities: Target: Pixel-Flo Limited; Lead Investor: Northern Gritstone; Co-Investors: SCVC, Parkwalk (Northern Universities Venture Fund), and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF); Key Founders: Dr. Rick Smith (CEO), Dr. Suneal Ghataora (CTO), Simon Jones (Chairman). Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK. Note: Spun out from the University of Sheffield in 2025, Pixel-Flo has developed an entirely new mass transfer architecture designed to solve the critical manufacturing bottleneck holding back microLED display commercialization. While microLED screens offer up to five times higher brightness and four times greater efficiency than legacy OLED or LCD displays, mass market volume adoption remains entirely blocked by sub-60% yields and immense component overheads associated with mechanical "pick-and-place" stamp assembly. Attempting to place millions of microscopic LED die onto a smartwatch or TV substrate with micron-level accuracy via robotic arms results in severe stamp defects ("mura"), edge-die material waste, and poor scaling economics. Pixel-Flo's proprietary Continuous-Flo™ solution bypasses mechanical transfer entirely through fluidic self-assembly. The company suspends known-good LED die in a specialized ink, uses standard photolithography to pattern chemical "traps" on the display substrate, and then applies a fluid meniscus-guided slot-die coating process to continuously slide the die into their assigned grids in a single step for RGB arrays. Because its slot-die process means unit manufacturing costs actually decrease as the panel size grows, the system enables standard foundries to scale microLED outputs using existing toolsets. The £5.25m Seed layer—complemented by the appointment of Taiwan-based Sanger Hsu as VP of Business Development—will fund their relocation to specialized larger laboratory facilities, support strategic hiring across process and fabrication engineering teams, and validate the technology on commercial coating rigs for global manufacturing partners.