Innovation & Inspiration: An Open Letter from SPARK Microsystems 

Greetings, semiconductor pioneers

On the occasion of Silicon Catalyst’s 2025 Portfolio Company Update, which brought together semiconductor startups at the Computer History Museum, SPARK Microsystems was honored to share its perspective. 

SPARK joined the Silicon Catalyst incubator program in 2017. Today, SPARK’s innovation is reverberating throughout the semiconductor industry and the diverse industries served by our valued customers in consumer electronics, industrial and IoT, medical devices and beyond.  

SPARK specializes in short-range wireless transceivers leveraging ultra-wideband (UWB) connectivity. SPARK LE-UWB™ technology provides high data rate and very low latency wireless links at an ultra-low power profile, making it ideal for personal area networks (PANs) in the new era of AI and AR mobile connected devices.  

Silicon Catalyst has been an important advocate for SPARK. SPARK is likewise a passionate advocate for our customers, partners, and peers striving to elevate the state of the art.  

For semiconductor startups, the challenges can feel like the weight of the world on your shoulders. Semiconductors are the most sophisticated devices known to humankind. It’s not easy designing or manufacturing them. Navigating dynamic economic and supply chain variables isn’t easy either. Resilience, adaptability, steady direction and fiscal discipline will see you through.  

When you succeed, you can enable transformational change. 

SPARK LE-UWB technology is helping our customers transform the markets they lead in by helping them transcend the performance and power confines of legacy short-range wireless platforms like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Drawing on SPARK’s design expertise and commitment to excellence, our customers are achieving ‘world first’ breakthroughs. 

Sonus faber, the prestigious Hi-Fi audio pioneers, sought a wireless link to pair their latest high-performance stereo speakers, free from the data rate, latency, and interference limitations of legacy wireless. They found SPARK LE-UWB and later introduced the world’s first consumer audio devices powered with UWB technology. Focal, the renowned French audio brand, brought its new SPARK LE-UWB-enabled speaker system to market in parallel. 

More recently, SPARK announced collaborations with gaming peripheral experts Waizowl and ELECOM. Both are leading in their market with their respective announcements of the world’s first gaming mice equipped with SPARK LE-UWB as the sole wireless connectivity option.  

SPARK’s recent solution collaboration with TokenMe has been successfully deployed at Denmark’s New Odense University Hospital, where it manages real-time tracking of tasks, assets, and personnel across a 250,000 square meter, multi-level construction site. SPARK LE-UWB enables precise positioning and reliability in real-time monitoring – essential for ensuring safety and efficiency in large-scale construction. 

TokenMe’s success in this implementation is impressive in its own right. It’s the world’s first construction site deployment to harness UWB at ultra-low power. And it hints at even bigger innovations on the horizon.   

SPARK LE-UWB’s ultra-low power profile is on a trajectory to help enable a new generation of battery-less wireless sensors that generate their own power from energy harvesting for greener IoT and infrastructure. Eliminating batteries and wires from future devices will liberate product designers and users in untold ways, with major environmental benefits. 

Nick Kepler, COO, Silicon Catalyst, graciously provided this perspective: “SPARK anticipated the inherent limitations of legacy connectivity with data-intensive, power-hungry devices like AI glasses still on the horizon. Today, SPARK’s LE-UWB technology fits readily at scale in this domain and many others, from wirelessly connected healthcare and industrial devices to robotics, ranging applications and beyond.” 

Guests of Silicon Catalyst – friends of SPARK – above all, you want your customers to succeed with your technology and thrive in a competitive marketplace. Their success is the best measure of your success, and both will benefit from close collaboration. 

The SPARK Team wishes you great success.
Fares Mubarak, CEO