Last Updated: 22 June 2026
Nearfield Instruments is a Dutch company that builds the tools used to measure and inspect advanced computer chips while they are being made. Its machines check the tiny structures printed onto a silicon wafer without damaging them. The company is led by co-founder and chief executive Dr. Hamed Sadeghian, and it has just secured a large round of funding to grow.
The work it does sits at a sensitive point in the chip supply chain. As AI models grow, chipmakers have to fit more computing power into each chip while using less energy. To do that, they have shrunk transistors to near atomic sizes and started stacking them in three dimensional designs. Measuring those structures accurately is now one of the harder problems in the industry. The market for this kind of equipment is already large. The semiconductor metrology and inspection market was worth about 10.3 billion dollars in 2025, and it is expected to keep growing through the next decade as chips become more complex.
Nearfield has raised 380 million dollars in a Series D round that values the company at 1.6 billion dollars. The round was led by new investor Fidelity Management & Research Company, with participation from Temasek, Walden Catalyst Ventures, Innovation Industries, M&G Investments, and Invest-NL. The Qatar Investment Authority joined as a new investor. Existing backers TNO Ventures and ING also took part. The company says the round was oversubscribed and is the largest ever for deep tech in the Netherlands.
A single advanced chip passes through hundreds of manufacturing steps, and a small mistake early on can ruin everything that follows. Metrology and inspection are the checks that catch those mistakes. They confirm that each layer has the right shape, thickness, and alignment before the wafer moves to the next stage. The job has grown harder as chip designs move into the third dimension. The features that matter now sit hidden inside tall, narrow structures instead of lying flat on the surface.
Nearfield's tools are built for these newer designs. The company supports measurements for High-NA EUV lithography, a printing method used for the smallest features, and for Gate-All-Around and CFET transistors and hybrid bonded 3D integration. In plain terms, chipmakers are stacking and wrapping components in ways that older measurement tools struggle to read. Tools that can look inside these structures without cutting the wafer apart are in short supply. That scarcity is part of why investor interest has been strong.
"Nearfield Instruments is operating at the intersection of two powerful industry shifts: the rapid scaling of AI and the transition to increasingly complex 3D semiconductor architectures. As the semiconductor industry enters a critical new phase, advanced metrology and inspection will become essential enablers of the next generation of chip innovation. We are excited to continue supporting the company's growth."
Young Sohn, Founding Managing Partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures
The company plans to grow on several fronts at once. It says it will speed up its product roadmap, expand its production capacity, and strengthen its customer support team around the world. It also intends to open Applications Centers of Excellence, which are sites where its engineers work directly with customers to apply the technology to specific manufacturing problems.
A large part of the plan is closer work with chipmakers themselves. The funding will support more joint research and development with leading semiconductor makers, so that Nearfield's tools can be tuned to the exact processes its customers run. The aim is simple. Build more machines, build them faster, and serve the demand created as AI scales. As AI grows, chipmakers must deliver far more computing power while using less energy, and that raises the need for the accurate process control that Nearfield's tools provide.
There is also a practical goal behind the technology. By giving manufacturers accurate, high speed measurements, the company helps them improve yield, which is the share of working chips on each wafer, while keeping energy use in check. Both matter to the data centers that train and run large AI systems, where cost and power consumption have become limiting factors.
Nearfield Instruments was founded in 2016 as a spin off from TNO, the Dutch research organization, and is based in Rotterdam. It employs roughly 450 people. The company runs operations in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the United States, and Belgium, which lets it work alongside customers in the main chipmaking regions. Dr. Hamed Sadeghian, a co-founder, serves as chief executive.
At the center of the business is a platform called QUADRA. It uses atomic force microscopy, a technique that measures surfaces at the scale of single atoms, and it does so without harming the wafer. Older inspection methods often required cutting a sample apart to see inside it, which destroyed the chip being measured. QUADRA can image complex shapes such as deep trenches and stacked layers in full three dimensions while the wafer stays intact, which suits the fast pace of high volume manufacturing.
"With this investment, we have one clear vision: to serve our customers with the highest execution, reliability, and speed while delivering breakthrough metrology and inspection solutions for the next generation of semiconductor devices. Nearfield is no longer an emerging player—we're building a global technology company that's here to stay, scale, and lead."
Dr. Hamed Sadeghian, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nearfield Instruments
The round brought together a mix of new and returning backers. New investor Fidelity Management & Research Company led the deal, and the Qatar Investment Authority came in as a new investor as well. They joined a group that includes Temasek, Walden Catalyst Ventures, Innovation Industries, M&G Investments, and Invest-NL. Existing investors TNO Ventures and ING added further support.
The mix is worth noting. Large international investors put money in alongside Dutch institutions, which points to both global and local confidence in the company. As a Series D, the round follows earlier funding stages, and the company describes it as the largest deep tech funding round ever raised in the Netherlands. It was also oversubscribed, meaning investors offered more money than the company set out to raise. That is usually a sign that demand for a stake was high.
"As global semiconductor demand accelerates, the ability to manufacture chips with atomic precision becomes a strategic imperative. Nearfield's innovative metrology platform directly addresses the process control challenges that advanced chipmakers face as they push toward next-generation nodes and 3D integration architectures. We are confident in the company's technology, market opportunity, and execution roadmap, and we're pleased to continue to support Nearfield as it scales its solutions to address this critical manufacturing bottleneck."
Niranjan Sirdeshpande, Head of Catalyst at M&G Investments
