Nagoya Japan Based "Photo electron Soul" raises $7M (¥740M)

Nagoya, Japan—Photo electron Soul Inc. announced that it has closed a financing
round of $7M (¥740M), achieved through the combination of the sale of stock to investors, a bank
loan, and financing from a national funding agency.

Photo electron Soul is the first and only company providing photocathode e-beam systems to the
industry. “We have proven that our technology resolves our customer’s biggest problem.” said
Takayuki Suzuki, CEO of Photo electron Soul, “Which will also fix their customer’s headaches” he
continued.

Photo electron Soul’s first product, the PES-2020 e-Beam System, was sold to a semiconductor
inspection tool manufacturer earlier this year.

In the most advanced semiconductor inspection processes, chip manufacturers have been facing huge
challenges as to how quickly they can ramp up the yield either in the early stage of chip development
or when moving into mass production.

Because of the slow e-beam inspection process using current e-beam technology, manufacturers have to settle for a long yield-improvement cycle time. Photo electron Soul solves this issue with its photocathode e-beam technology .

Our technology makes the inspection process more than 10 times faster than anyone else could
achieve with today’s e-beam technology, and we have more great features with this technology company said.

Our technology is based upon 30 years of R&D activities at Nagoya University, so the superior
performance is well supported by tons of data” Suzuki explained.

We’ll soon start an evaluation program together with a chip maker and an inspection tool maker in order to find out the most effective inspection process application by implementing our photocathode e-beam technology. And we are confident our technology will be valued by both of them.” he concluded.

Photo electron Soul plans to initiate this type of program with other players as well, and it plans to use
the funding to continue business development and product manufacturing.