Nexstrom has raised a $12 million seed round to commercialize its wafer-scale 2D semiconductor platform, which is being developed to help chipmakers move beyond the physical limitations of silicon for next-generation AI and high-performance computing systems.
The round was led by Xora Innovation, with participation from Foothill Ventures and SEEDS. The financing brings Nexstrom’s total capital raised to $15 million, including $3 million in non-dilutive funding.
The Singapore-based company plans to use the new capital to accelerate development and commercialization of what it describes as the industry’s first 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductor platform built around production-ready manufacturing tools.
Nexstrom is also working with semiconductor industry partners to validate its technology within existing chip manufacturing workflows, an important step toward demonstrating that 2D materials can move from laboratory research into large-scale commercial semiconductor production.
The technology is aimed at one of the semiconductor industry’s most fundamental challenges.
For decades, chipmakers have increased computing performance by shrinking silicon transistors and packing more of them onto a chip. But as transistor dimensions continue to decline, silicon is approaching physical limits that make further scaling increasingly difficult.
At extremely small dimensions, electrons can begin leaking through silicon channels, increasing energy loss and making it harder to continue improving performance and efficiency using conventional transistor materials alone.
Nexstrom is developing atomically thin 2D semiconductor materials as a potential alternative.
Because the materials can be only a few atoms thick, they can provide tighter control over electron movement and potentially reduce energy loss at the transistor level.
The company believes that combination could enable faster and more energy-efficient chips for AI accelerators, data centers and other high-performance computing applications.
The central challenge has not been proving that 2D semiconductor materials can work.
Researchers have demonstrated their potential for years, but manufacturing them consistently across the large wafers required by commercial semiconductor fabs has remained a major obstacle.
Nexstrom is focused specifically on that manufacturing problem.
The company is developing a platform for growing single-crystal 2D semiconductor materials across 12-inch, or 300-millimeter, wafers, the standard wafer size used in many of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities.
That scale is significant because semiconductor manufacturers generally cannot adopt new materials economically if those materials are available only as small laboratory samples.
To become commercially useful, they need to be produced uniformly, repeatedly and at high quality across large wafers while fitting into existing semiconductor manufacturing processes.
Nexstrom’s full-stack approach combines proprietary chemical vapor deposition hardware, specialized process technology and wafer-scale 2D material growth.
Unlike techniques that produce only small research samples or require semiconductor manufacturers to significantly modify their fabrication processes, Nexstrom designed its technology to integrate directly into existing foundry workflows.
The platform combines specialized equipment, chemistry and manufacturing expertise to support continuous single-crystal growth across 12-inch wafers.
If the company can demonstrate that approach at commercial scale, it could help remove one of the largest barriers preventing 2D materials from being deployed in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.
Nexstrom was founded in 2024 and incubated through Xora Innovation’s venture-building model, which is designed to help translate advanced scientific research into commercially viable businesses.
The company’s technology is rooted in years of research into 2D materials and post-silicon electronics.
Its scientific efforts are led by co-founder and Chief Scientist Dr. Lance Li, who has worked on single-crystal molybdenum disulfide, or MoS₂, growth since 2012.
Li later led corporate research at TSMC focused on post-silicon electronics and brings experience spanning atomic-layer chemistry, semiconductor manufacturing and 2D materials.
He has also been recognized as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher since 2018, a distinction that the company said represents approximately the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide by research influence.
Nexstrom is supported by a board and advisory group that includes semiconductor industry leaders Dr. Sundar Ramamurthy, Dr. Philip Wong, Dr. Aaron Thean and Dr. John Langan.
Wong, an Inez Kerr Bell Professor at Stanford University and board advisor to Nexstrom, said 2D semiconductor materials are already appearing on the technology roadmaps of major semiconductor companies.
The remaining challenge is making those materials manufacturable at the quality and scale required by advanced chipmakers.
That makes 300-millimeter wafer compatibility particularly important.
Advanced foundries have invested enormous amounts of capital in manufacturing facilities optimized around standardized wafer sizes, process equipment and tightly controlled production flows.
A new semiconductor material therefore becomes much easier to commercialize if it can enter those existing environments without requiring manufacturers to redesign entire fabrication lines.
Nexstrom is positioning its platform around that requirement.
The company wants to provide foundries with a manufacturing-ready materials platform that can serve as an additional building block for transistors after conventional silicon scaling becomes increasingly constrained.
The opportunity is closely tied to the growth of artificial intelligence.
AI models require enormous amounts of computing capacity, and operators of AI data centers are increasingly focused not only on raw processing performance but also on the amount of electricity required to deliver it.
More energy-efficient transistor materials could therefore become strategically important as AI infrastructure expands.
Nexstrom believes its 2D semiconductor technology could contribute to chips that provide greater computing performance while reducing power loss at the transistor level.
The seed funding will support continued development of the platform, collaborations with semiconductor foundries and expansion of Nexstrom’s engineering and leadership teams.
The company’s longer-term goal is to establish 2D semiconductor materials as a commercially scalable foundation for post-silicon computing.
Achieving that objective will depend on demonstrating that Nexstrom can produce single-crystal 2D materials with the uniformity, reliability and cost structure required by the semiconductor industry.
But by focusing specifically on 12-inch wafer-scale production and compatibility with existing foundry workflows, Nexstrom is targeting the manufacturing bottleneck that has historically separated promising 2D semiconductor research from commercial adoption.
KEY QUOTES:
“Silicon has fueled decades of computing innovation, but the industry now needs a new materials platform to continue scaling performance. For years, the challenge has not been demonstrating the promise of 2D materials, but manufacturing them at the scale and quality advanced foundries require.”
Dr. Lance Li, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Nexstrom
“The question is no longer whether 2D semiconductors matter. They are already on the technology roadmap of major semiconductor companies. The challenge is making them manufacturable.”
“The industry needs high-quality, uniform 2D materials on 300 mm substrates, and solving that materials bottleneck is exactly where Nexstrom is focused.”
Dr. Philip Wong, Board Advisor at Nexstrom and Inez Kerr Bell Professor at Stanford University
