[L-R] Tin Men Capital’s Jeremy Tan with nSWX co-founders Amani Salim and Iqbal Shamsul

Malaysian deeptech startup nSWX is targeting copper interconnects as AI infrastructure pushes chip packages towards tighter thermal limits

The race to build larger AI models has created a less glamorous but increasingly urgent problem: how to move heat and power through ever-denser chip packages without driving up cost, energy use and complexity. A Malaysian startup now wants to solve part of that problem at the material boundary level.

Kuala Lumpur-based nanoSkunkWorkX (nSWX) has raised US$2 million in seed funding led by Singapore-based frontier tech investor Tin Men Capital.

nSWX develops thin-film interfaces designed to improve how energy, heat and electronic signals move between components in advanced devices, with applications across AI chip packaging, green hydrogen and rapid diagnostics.

Its lead product, nSD-I, is aimed at one of the choke points in advanced AI hardware: copper interconnects inside chip packages. These interconnects help carry current and transmit signals, but as packages become denser, they also have to handle more heat and electrical load. nSWX says its interface can help copper carry more current and spread heat more effectively without replacing copper itself or forcing manufacturers to overhaul existing production lines.

That “drop-in” positioning matters. Semiconductor manufacturing is expensive, risk-averse and slow to change. A material that promises performance gains but requires new equipment or a major redesign can face years of resistance. nSWX’s bet is that improving a small interface inside the package can create meaningful system-level gains while fitting into existing manufacturing flows.

“The cost of building and operating AI infrastructure can be dramatically reduced through small efficiency gains at the process step level, and for us, the opportunity lies in improving how the copper inside the packaging carries current, heat, and signals,” said Iqbal Shamsul, co-founder and CEO of nSWX.

Why the interface matters

AI infrastructure is usually discussed in terms of GPUs, data centres and energy grids. But much of the performance battle is now happening inside advanced packages, where multiple chips, memory stacks and interconnects are packed tightly together. The more densely these systems are built, the more difficult it becomes to move heat away and deliver power efficiently.

If heat is not managed well, chips can throttle, meaning they slow down to avoid damage. That reduces compute performance and raises the cost of running AI workloads. Cooling also accounts for a significant share of data centre operating expenditure, making thermal efficiency a commercial issue rather than a purely technical one.

nSWX’s approach focuses on graphene-copper films. According to the company, peer-reviewed work showed that its films can move heat across their surface more than twice as effectively as a copper baseline. Follow-up tests also found that the material retained its advantage after use in pre-qualification test components.

The company has not yet cleared full semiconductor partner qualification, which is often the hardest stage for deeptech startups selling into chip supply chains.

The new capital will go towards that process, as well as scaling its interface-engineering platform, advancing hydrogen validation and diagnostics programmes across Asia, and hiring for strategic roles.

Co-founder and CTO Dr Amani Salim, a former NASA principal investigator, frames the opportunity as a boundary problem.

“At scale, performance breaks at the boundaries between materials. Heat, charge, and signals concentrate where one material meets another, and that is where many critical losses in modern systems occur,” she said. “Our thesis is that improving a small, critical interface can unlock much larger system gains while preserving the materials, equipment and manufacturing base already around it.”

A Malaysian deeptech bet

nSWX was founded in 2019 by Salim and Shamsul, an MIT-trained computer scientist and former Vice President of Morgan Stanley Commodities . The pair returned to Malaysia to build the company, arguing that the country’s materials base, manufacturing depth and growing policy interest in strategic technologies could support frontier hardware work.

That thesis aligns with Malaysia’s wider semiconductor ambitions. The country handles around 13 per cent of global chip assembly, testing and packaging, and is the world’s sixth-largest semiconductor exporter. While Malaysia has historically been stronger in the backend of the chip value chain than in chip design or wafer fabrication, advanced packaging is increasingly viewed as a strategic opening as the global industry looks beyond traditional transistor scaling.

Government-linked capital is also moving in that direction. Through its Dana Impak mandate, Khazanah Nasional has made an initial RM1 billion (about US$247 million), allocation for strategic investments, including AI and semiconductor technologies. nSWX counts Gobi Dana Impak, a fund launched by Khazanah and Gobi Partners, and Kumpulan Modal Perdana among its backers, alongside Tin Men Capital.

The startup has built its core platform, three product lines, peer-reviewed semiconductor data and first revenue with less than US$1.5 million in cumulative external pre-seed capital. For a hardware company, where laboratory equipment, testing cycles and technical hires can quickly consume capital, that is a notable claim. It also explains Tin Men Capital’s interest.

“We have been spending considerable time in Malaysia’s tech ecosystem and are delighted to make our first investment in a startup like nanoSkunkWorkX,” said Jeremy Tan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tin Men Capital. “This is a rare team that understands the physics, has built with exceptional capital efficiency, and engages customers at the senior technical level required to actually deploy.”

Not just chips

Although AI packaging is the headline opportunity, nSWX is applying the same interface-engineering platform to other sectors. In green hydrogen, it is working on improving charge transfer and reducing reliance on platinum-group metals, which are costly and supply-constrained. In diagnostics, it is developing biosensor technology through a paid joint R&D agreement with the U.S. Navy’s Naval Medical Research Unit INDOPAC.

The spread across semiconductors, hydrogen and diagnostics could be read in two ways. On one hand, it gives nSWX multiple routes to market for its core materials platform. On the other, deeptech companies often face pressure to narrow their focus, particularly when semiconductor qualification alone can demand years of technical and commercial effort.

For Southeast Asia, however, the company’s breadth reflects a broader shift. The region’s startup ecosystem has long been associated with consumer platforms, fintech and asset-light software. Deeptech firms working on materials, advanced manufacturing, climate hardware and semiconductors are now attracting more attention, partly because governments want stronger positions in strategic supply chains.

nSWX has been selected for the inaugural SemiconStart Malaysia cohort, led by MTDC with Silicon Catalyst UK, to advance package qualification and global semiconductor industry access. It was also a finalist in the Baker Hughes Energy Ideas Generation Program APAC in 2025.

The competitive field

nSWX will not be operating in an empty market. Thermal interface materials and advanced packaging inputs are supplied by global materials groups such as Henkel, Indium Corporation, DuPont, 3M and Parker Hannifin, while packaging giants and foundries are also pushing their own integration roadmaps. Startups such as Carbice in the US have worked on carbon-based thermal materials for electronics and aerospace applications.

sIn Southeast Asia, nSWX’s challenge will be less about replacing these players outright and more about proving that its graphene-copper interface can qualify inside conservative semiconductor supply chains, where reliability data, repeatability and manufacturing compatibility matter as much as raw performance.

That makes the next stage critical. A seed round can fund testing, hiring and partner engagement, but semiconductor adoption depends on long qualification cycles and trust from customers who cannot afford failure inside high-value packages.

Still, nSWX’s timing is favourable. AI compute demand is forcing the industry to look for gains beyond chip architecture alone. If a small materials layer can help reduce heat, improve current flow and preserve existing manufacturing processes, it could become part of the less visible infrastructure behind cheaper and more efficient AI.

For Malaysia, the bigger question is whether startups like nSWX can move the country from being a key manufacturing node to a source of defensible semiconductor technology. The answer will depend not on ambition, but on qualification data, customer adoption and whether regional capital is patient enough for frontier hardware’s slower clock.