AI Chips Are Becoming Extremely Hot
The AI industry usually talks about computing performance.
How many GPUs?
How fast can a model run?
How many parameters can it process?
But as AI processors become increasingly powerful, engineers face another problem that is just as important:
Heat.
More computing packed into a smaller physical space means more electrical current and more heat that needs to be removed.
If that heat cannot be moved away efficiently, chips may need to reduce their operating speed, consume more energy for cooling or become harder and more expensive to package.
A Malaysian startup believes part of the solution could be found in something extremely thin.
nanoSkunkWorkX, or nSWX, announced on 2 September that it has raised US$2 million in seed funding to advance its semiconductor materials technology towards commercial qualification.
Making Copper Work Harder
Copper is already widely used to carry electrical current and signals inside semiconductor devices.
nSWX is not trying to remove it.
Instead, its approach is to add an engineered material interface that helps the existing copper perform better.
The company’s lead semiconductor product is called nSD-I.
It uses a graphene-copper interface intended to improve how electrical current and heat move through copper interconnect structures used in advanced semiconductor packaging.
The important part is compatibility.
Rather than forcing semiconductor manufacturers to redesign their entire manufacturing process around a new conductor, nSWX says its technology is designed to work with existing copper and manufacturing infrastructure.
That could make adoption easier if the technology successfully passes semiconductor industry qualification.
Why Advanced Packaging Is Becoming So Important
Modern AI processors are no longer necessarily one giant piece of silicon.
Increasingly, multiple specialised chips are packaged extremely close together.
A high-performance AI package might combine processors, high-bandwidth memory and other components through advanced interconnect technologies.
This allows enormous amounts of information to move quickly between different parts of the system.
But packing more computing into a smaller area also increases power density.
And higher power density means more heat.
That is why semiconductor packaging is becoming almost as strategically important as the chips themselves.
Improving the materials connecting those components could potentially allow future systems to move more electrical current while also spreading heat more efficiently.
The Company Says Its Material Can Spread Heat Better Than Copper Alone
nSWX says peer-reviewed research involving its graphene-copper films demonstrated significantly improved thermal performance.
According to the company, the films were able to move heat laterally across their surface at more than twice the rate of a copper baseline.
Follow-up testing reportedly showed that the performance advantage remained when the technology was incorporated into pre-qualification test components.
That does not mean the material is already inside commercial AI processors.
Semiconductor qualification is a demanding process.
Materials need to demonstrate not only performance but also reliability, consistency, compatibility with existing manufacturing steps and the ability to be produced economically at scale.
That is exactly what part of the new funding will support.
US$2 Million to Move From Research Towards Manufacturing
The seed round was led by Singapore-based frontier technology investor Tin Men Capital.
The investment is also significant because it represents Tin Men Capital’s first investment in a Malaysian startup.
nSWX plans to use the capital to:
- Qualify its technology with semiconductor partners
- Scale its interface-engineering process
- Conduct additional semiconductor validation
- Continue development of its green hydrogen technology
- Advance its diagnostic and biosensor programmes
The company says it had already developed three product lines, generated its first revenue and produced peer-reviewed semiconductor data using less than US$1.5 million in cumulative external pre-seed funding.
The Founders Brought Their Experience Back to Malaysia
nSWX was co-founded by Dr Amani Salim, a former NASA principal investigator, and Iqbal Shamsul, an MIT-trained computer scientist who previously worked in commodities at Morgan Stanley.
Rather than building the company entirely overseas, the founders established the deep-tech operation in Malaysia.
That matters because semiconductor materials companies are much harder to build than conventional software startups.
A software company can sometimes create and launch a product with a relatively small team and limited infrastructure.
Semiconductor startups often need specialised laboratories, equipment, materials research, industry partnerships and lengthy qualification cycles before commercial deployment is possible.
Building those capabilities locally adds another layer to Malaysia’s semiconductor ecosystem.
Malaysia Wants More Companies Like This
Malaysia already has a large semiconductor industry.
But much of the country’s historical strength has been concentrated in manufacturing, assembly and testing.
The next ambition is to develop more locally created technology and intellectual property.
nSWX was selected for the inaugural SemiconStart Malaysia cohort, an initiative led by Malaysian Technology Development Corporation together with Silicon Catalyst UK.
The programme is designed specifically to help semiconductor startups progress from research and early development towards commercialisation.
A Malaysian company developing its own advanced semiconductor material therefore represents a different type of opportunity.
Instead of only manufacturing technology designed elsewhere, Malaysia could potentially create more of the technology that goes into future semiconductor manufacturing itself.
AI Is Creating Opportunities Far Beyond GPUs
The AI semiconductor boom is usually associated with companies such as NVIDIA.
But an AI processor depends on an enormous technology ecosystem.
It needs:
- Semiconductor fabrication
- Advanced packaging
- High-bandwidth memory
- Interconnect technology
- Substrates
- Power delivery
- Thermal management
- Cooling
- Specialised materials
As AI chips become more powerful, improvements at almost every layer can become valuable.
A seemingly small reduction in electrical resistance or improvement in heat transfer could become significant when multiplied across thousands of processors operating continuously.
That is the opportunity nSWX is targeting.
Its technology doesn’t need to replace the AI processor.
It aims to make part of the physical infrastructure inside that processor work more efficiently.
There Is Still a Long Road Ahead
The US$2 million funding round is an important milestone, but the biggest test still lies ahead.
Promising laboratory results need to become repeatable manufacturing results.
The semiconductor industry has extremely strict reliability requirements, particularly when a new material is being introduced into advanced chip packaging.
nSWX now needs to demonstrate that its technology can meet those requirements through qualification with semiconductor partners.
If it succeeds, however, Malaysia could have a locally developed technology addressing a problem that is becoming increasingly important as AI computing becomes more power-intensive.
Closing Thoughts
The next breakthrough in artificial intelligence may not always come from a bigger AI model or a faster GPU.
Sometimes it can come from improving a tiny layer of material inside the chip.
As processors become denser and more powerful, controlling electricity and heat becomes increasingly difficult.
nanoSkunkWorkX is trying to solve part of that problem by making one of the semiconductor industry’s most familiar materials — copper — perform better.
Whether the technology eventually reaches commercial AI processors will depend on successful industry qualification and manufacturing scale-up.
But the fact that this work is being developed by a Malaysian deep-tech company is itself significant.
Malaysia’s semiconductor future does not have to be limited to assembling and manufacturing other companies’ technology.
Companies such as nSWX show what the next step could look like:
technology developed in Malaysia, intellectual property created in Malaysia, and potentially used inside the next generation of global computing hardware.