E689 | Simon Thomas, Founder of Paragraf: Graphene Chips, AI Energy, and the Hard-Tech Road from Lab to Fab

Feb 3, 2026

Simon Thomas, founder and CEO of Paragraf, who turned graphene lab breakthroughs into a wafer-scale electronics foundry. He talks about building the first graphene electronics foundry, how graphene could cut device energy use, the challenges of scaling single-atom materials into manufacturing, the dual foundry-plus-product strategy, financing heavy capex in deep tech, and why AI helps discovery but not the grind of fabrication.

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INSIGHT

20-Year Lab-To-Fab Gap

Graphene research began in 2004 with rapid academic output, but manufacturing-quality graphene lagged until the 2010s.
Paragraf's 2015–2017 breakthrough focused on making high-quality graphene at wafer scale for real-world use.

ADVICE

Choose Investors Who Learn With You

Engage investors only after you can show both material capability and a tangible product to reduce ambiguity.
Seek investors who will learn the tech and theorize about its future even if they lack immediate expertise.

INSIGHT

Sovereign Backing As A Growth Catalyst

Sovereign investment acts as a credibility catalyst: national backing attracts further private capital and signals trust.
British Patient Capital helped Paragraf unlock additional investor confidence and inbound interest.

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Welcome back!

In this episode, Andreas Munk Holm sits down with Simon Thomas, CEO of Paragraf, one of Europe’s rare hard-tech success stories, taking graphene from scientific breakthrough to industrial-scale electronics.

Graphene has been called the “wonder material” for two decades. The promise has always been clear: faster, better, and dramatically more energy-efficient electronics. The missing piece has been execution at scale. Simon and the Paragraf team are building that missing bridge, with the world’s first graphene electronics foundry in the UK, a growing portfolio of real commercial products, and a deep conviction that the next era of computing will require new materials, not just bigger data centers.

This is a conversation about what it truly takes to build venture-backed hardware in Europe.

How you fund capex-heavy deep tech.
How do you keep investors aligned when timelines are long.
How you keep teams motivated through delays and national security reviews.

And why AI may accelerate materials discovery, but won’t replace the brutal, necessary work of turning atoms into real manufacturing.

What’s covered:

01:27 What Paragraf is building and why graphene matters now
03:50 Graphene wafers and the world’s first graphene electronics foundry
04:23 What graphene changes for power consumption and device life
05:01 Why graphene isn’t already inside data centers
06:13 The future of “2D electronics” beyond graphene
08:02 Foundry versus product company: why Paragraf does both
09:40 Graphene’s 20-year journey from papers to real-world scale
13:15 When venture investors first showed up and what they needed to see
16:58 Sovereignty, British Patient Capital, and why “national backing” matters
24:08 The product-to-foundry loop and how you hook customers early
27:36 Capex, equity limits, and the painful mechanics of deep-tech financing
30:22 Surviving hard moments: people, pivots, and the NSI Act review
38:10 How to structure boards over time, from tactical to strategic
42:23 Keeping teams committed through uncertainty
46:10 Where Paragraf is today: headcount, geographies, and commercialization
49:16 AI in materials discovery and why manufacturing is still the bottleneck