Malaysia’s GreatAsic raises $6.9 M Pre-series A funding to develope custom AI chip design capabilities
GreatAsic, a fabless bespoke chip design firm based in Malaysia, has raised $6.9 million in a Pre-Series A round headed by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with participation from Gobi Partners and Ehsan Kapital.
Vertex Ventures said in a statement on Tuesday that the investment is consistent with Malaysia expanding its traditional role in semiconductor assembly and testing to include front-end chip design skills. According to the fund, the money raised would be used for hiring engineers, expanding operations, and accelerating the company’s future silicon initiatives.
GreatAsic creates unique ASICs and AI System-on-Chip solutions for the automotive, Edge AI, and data center industries. Having obtained both Arm Flexible Access and Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems tokens, the company is one of the first Malaysian design firms to have access to Arm Holdings’ semiconductor intellectual property. The Arm Flexible Access arrangement has already been finalized with the Malaysian Investment Development Authority.
Malaysia has top-notch engineering talent and a once-in-a-generation chance to design, not just manufacture, the chips that drive the AI age, according to Ong Chin Hu, founder and CEO of GreatAsic.
According to Chan Yip Pang, Executive Director of Investment at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, GreatAsic’s leadership team is among the best in Malaysia for designing and delivering an AI SoC because they have histories at StarFive, Intel, Marvell, and Broadcom.
The fundraising, according to Yong Kai Ping, CEO of Selangor Information Technology and Digital Economy Corporation, is indicative of the level of innovation that the Malaysia Semiconductor IC Design Park was intended to foster.
