Valens Semiconductor and Intel Foundry Services Announce Strategic Relationship for Next Generation A-PHY Product

The strategic collaboration will accelerate adoption of the MIPI A-PHY standard technology for enhanced ADAS and safety boosting the industry's chiplet vision

HOD HASHARON, Israel -- January 9, 2024 -- Today, Valens Semiconductor (NYSE:VLN) and Intel Foundry Services (IFS) announce that IFS will fabricate Valens Semiconductor's MIPI A-PHY chipsets using its advanced process nodes, aiming to address the robust demand in the market for this innovative connectivity solution. This collaboration furthers the strategic relationship between Valens and IFS that starts with the development of next generation of A-PHY in the automotive industry based on Intel leading-edge technology.

MIPI A-PHY is the first automotive industry standard developed for in-vehicle high-speed sensor connectivity. Since its release in 2020, it has attracted a growing ecosystem of companies designing products based on the technology. Valens Semiconductor, a key contributor to the standard, was the first on the market to offer A-PHY-compliant chipsets with its VA7000 product family.

"Best-in-class products, like our A-PHY chipsets, require best-in-class processes – and that's exactly what we're getting through this collaboration with Intel Foundry Services" said Gideon Ben Zvi, CEO of Valens Semiconductor. "With the full suite of resources Intel offers, including advanced process and packaging technologies, and a broad IP portfolio, we're confident that we can further advance our A-PHY products. As a leader in MIPI A-PHY, we are proud to provide the most resilient high-performance connectivity technology, enabling significantly safer cars in the future."

As part of this strategic collaboration, Valens Semiconductor will utilize Intel's leading edge process technology to produce its second generation of A-PHY chipsets. Intel's ecosystem and advanced processes will enable significant cost and power reductions for this chipset family while achieving the highest-performance and flawless Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC). With the significant increase in bandwidth and other architecture requirements, this unique set of capabilities ensure link performance and passenger safety are maintained at all times.

"One of the goals of Intel Foundry Services is to identify transformative technologies, and harness Intel's breakthrough process technology and global ecosystem to accelerate innovation and unlock new opportunities for our customers," said Stuart Pann, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Intel Foundry Services. "The MIPI A-PHY chipset is an obvious fit – a next-generation technology with the potential for broad market adoption that can help advance automotive performance and safety and further the autonomous vision."

This collaboration will play a significant role in boosting the vision for a chiplet architecture in the automotive industry. With its reliance on advanced package integration and the use of standardized interfaces such as UCIe, the chiplet architecture will be complimented by MIPI A-PHY as the standardized connectivity interface. This is the best way to meet the automotive market's requirements for high reliability, high performance, and low latency, and MIPI A-PHY will be a key enabler of this next-generation silicon architecture.

About Intel Foundry Services

IFS is a critical pillar of Intel's IDM 2.0 strategy, a multiyear transformation to regain and strengthen technology leadership, manufacturing scale and long-term growth. Intel's global manufacturing footprint – including investments in both the U.S. and EU – is designed to help balance the world's silicon capacity and ensure the sustainable, resilient, and secure supply chain the world needs. Through a differentiated IDM 2.0 model, Intel is in a unique position to help serve critical customer products globally and prepare for the continuous increase in future semiconductor demand.

About Valens Semiconductor

Valens Semiconductor (NYSE:VLN) is a leader in high-performance connectivity, enabling customers to transform the digital experiences of people worldwide. Valens' chipsets are integrated into countless devices from leading customers, powering state-of-the-art audio-video installations, next-generation videoconferencing, and enabling the evolution of ADAS and autonomous driving. Pushing the boundaries of connectivity, Valens sets the standard everywhere it operates, and its technology forms the basis for the leading industry standards such as HDBaseT® and MIPI A-PHY. For more information, visit https://www.valens.com/.