GreatAsic raises US$6.9mil pre-series A funding from Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, Ehsan Kapital and Gobi Partners

• GreatAsic aims to be leading IC design firm in SEA, supporting Malaysia’s National Semiconductor Strategy
• Funding strengthens national aspiration to move beyond “Made in Malaysia” toward “Made by Malaysia” IC chips

GreatAsic Technology Sdn Bhd (GreatAsic), a Malaysia-based fabless custom chip design company with operations in Penang and Selangor, has raised US$6.9 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, with participation from Ehsan Kapital and Gobi Partners.

GreatAsic designs custom ASICs and AI System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms for the data center, Edge AI and automotive markets. Its emergence, along with the recent stellar stock market debut of SkyeChip which closed at a RM3.97 billion market cap at the end of its debut trading day, marks another signal for Malaysia, long a hub for semiconductor package assembly and testing, towards front-end chip design.

The company is among the first Malaysian design firms to access Arm Holdings’ semiconductor IP, having secured both Arm Flexible Access (AFA) and Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS) tokens, with the AFA agreement already formalised with Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA).

The investment will fund engineering hires, expand operations and accelerate development of GreatAsic’s planned silicon projects.

Ong Chin Hu, founder and CEO of GreatAsic, said, “Malaysia has world-class engineering talent and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to design, not just build, the chips that power the AI era. This funding lets us hire engineers, expand operations and accelerate our planned ASIC projects, and build a Malaysian semiconductor design ecosystem that endures.”

Chan Yip Pang, Executive Director, Investment, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, said, “We have known this team for several years, and on the strength of their track record in past roles at companies such as StarFive, Intel, Marvell and Broadcom, we believe they are the best positioned in Malaysia to design and deliver an AI SoC. For decades the country has assembled and tested the world’s semiconductors; designing them is a far harder and more valuable undertaking, and few teams in the region are equipped to take it on. We are proud to back GreatAsic and to support the homegrown design capability the National Semiconductor Strategy was created to foster.”

Yong Kai Ping, CEO of Selangor Information Technology & Digital Economy Corporation (SIDEC), said, “GreatAsic reflects the high-caliber innovation that the Malaysia Semiconductor IC Design Park was built to cultivate. By providing world-class infrastructure, EDA tools, and public-private support, the Park is positioning Malaysia as a vital node in the global semiconductor supply chain.”