In June 2026 Sunrise announced an investment of US$5 million in Agni Semiconductor LLC, a private US company developing next-generation non-volatile memory and AI compute-in-memory semiconductors, based on aluminium scandium nitride and ferroelectric diode architectures. The investment is subject to customary conditions precedent.
Agni was founded by a world-class research team at the University of Pennsylvania, whose work on memory-enhanced computing utilising AlScN ferrodiodes is recognised as a leading contender for high-performance, energy-efficient memory and AI inference hardware. Agni was awarded the Bell Labs Prize® in 2022.
Agni is a Philadelphia-headquartered semiconductor company founded in 2024. Agni’s founding team includes Dr. Chris D’Couto (CEO; previously Intel Corporation, Lam Research and FormFactor), Dr. Deep Jariwala (Chief Scientific Officer; Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania); Dr. Roy (Troy) H. Olsson III (Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former DARPA program manager) and Dr. Eric A. Stach (Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Scientific Director of the Singh Center for Nanotechnology). The team’s research on memory-enhanced computing utilising AlScN ferrodiodes was awarded the Bell Labs Prize® in 2022. Dr. Tsu-Jae King Liu, a former director of Intel Corporation, Professor Emerita of UC Berkley School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the current President of the US National Academy of Engineering, serves on Agni’s advisory board.
Our investment in Agni reflects the next step in Sunrise’s strategy of moving from a pure strategic metal producer to an active participant in the technologies that will shape future demand for scandium. Aluminium scandium nitride is one of the most credible emerging materials platforms in the semiconductor industry, and Agni’s ferroelectric diode architecture is among the most unique implementations of the technology we’ve seen. We look forward to working with Agni’s world-class technical team to address some of the most pressing constraints on high-temperature memory applications and AI compute systems.
We are delighted to welcome Sunrise as a strategic investor and partner. Sunrise brings something that very few investors in our space can offer: direct alignment with the upstream supply of one of the elements at the heart of our technology platform. Scandium is a metal of strategic importance for a variety of applications – in our case for a highly differentiated memory and AI-compute solution. Our initial memory products are focused on extreme environments (high temperature, high radiation) for the defense sector, industrial base applications where materials sourcing is critical. Our focus now turns to advancing foundry qualification, prototype delivery to defence and aerospace customers and the broader compute-in-memory opportunity.