A few months after the bankruptcy, a dozen former employees of Pharrowtech have restarted operations as Pharrics. Still based in Leuven and led by Wim Van Thillo, the team continues on the path of IC, antenna and packaging design for mm-wave and RF. They do so under the ownership of Realtek Semiconductor, a Taiwanese fabless company specializing in chips for various applications, including computer peripherals, consumer electronics and network hardware. The focus and technical expertise of Pharrics match these target markets.
Last May, Pharrowtech went bankrupt. The Imec spinoff designed chip and antenna solutions for high-speed mm-wave applications, specifically broadband 5G fixed wireless access (FWA). The reason for the bankruptcy was insufficient commercial traction in the FWA market, CEO and co-founder Van Thillo told Bits&Chips at the time. “As a startup, you have to focus. Unfortunately, this focus hasn’t yielded the desired results. Despite many successful field trials of our product, the order intake remains too small and its growth is too slow to justify further investment in the current difficult funding climate.”
