Nexstrom Raises $12M To Push 2D Wafers Toward Chip Foundries
SiliconANGLE reported that Singapore startup Nexstrom raised $12 million to commercialize a 2D semiconductor wafer platform designed for 12-inch production and existing foundry workflows.
Nexstrom has raised $12 million to move an alternative chip-wafer material out of laboratory scale and toward foundries, SiliconANGLE reported, giving the Singapore startup fresh backing for a manufacturing route it says could help chipmakers work beyond silicon’s physical limits.
The seed round was led by Xora Innovation, with SEEDS and Foothill Ventures also taking part.
It brings Nexstrom’s total funding to $15 million and is aimed at commercializing a wafer-scale platform for two-dimensional semiconductor materials rather than another incremental design around conventional silicon.
The company’s target is specific: mass production of 12-inch wafers made from single-crystal 2D materials.
Those wafers are intended for future chips that need tighter transistor control and lower power loss as artificial intelligence workloads push demand for faster and more energy-efficient processors.
That pitch rests on a constraint familiar to advanced chipmakers.
Silicon channels can only shrink so far before electrons leak through structures that have become too small to control efficiently.
At the scale now being pursued for AI processors and dense compute clusters, that leakage turns into wasted power and weaker operating efficiency.
Nexstrom is working with transition metal dichalcogenide materials, a class of atomically thin crystals that can conduct electricity at sub-nanometer scales.
The materials also reduce interface flaws such as micro-voids, allowing tighter gate control and a path toward transistors below the one-nanometer threshold.
The funding does not mean the industry has already solved the manufacturing problem.
Co-founder and Chief Scientist Lance Li framed the remaining challenge as scale and foundry-grade quality, saying the issue has shifted from proving the promise of 2D materials to making them in volumes and uniformity advanced chip factories can use.
Nexstrom’s answer combines proprietary chemical vapor deposition hardware, specialized chemistry and process technology designed to fit into existing foundry workflows.
That matters because research samples alone would not be enough if chipmakers had to rebuild production systems before testing the material at commercial scale.
The source also cited Philip Wong, a Stanford University professor and Nexstrom board adviser, who tied the company’s focus to a broader industry bottleneck.
His view was that large semiconductor firms already have 2D materials on their roadmaps, but still need high-quality, uniform 300-millimeter substrates before the approach can become practical.
