Silicon Box, a Singapore-based semiconductor design and device integration services startup, claims to have reached a valuation of over $1 billion, minting it as the region’s latest unicorn, after raising $200 million in Series B funding.
DealStreetAsia first reported in December that the company had raised at least $139.4 million in its Series B funding round, based on its filings with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA).
In an announcement, Silicon Box said the funding round was backed by BRV Capital, Event Horizon Capital, Grandfull Convergence Fund, Hillhouse Capital, Lam Capital, Maverick Capital, Prasedium Capital, Tata Electronics, TDK Ventures, and UMC Capital.
The company’s co-founders – Sehat Sutardja, his wife Weili Dai, and Byung Joon Han – also invested in the Series B round.
Silicon Box raised $208 million across its seed, Series A, and Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) funding rounds backed by its founders and venture capital firms such as BRV Capital and Ignite Foundation Fund.
Founded in 2021, the startup’s proprietary interconnection technology connects chiplets in a way that its clients can design flexibly with higher performance and lower energy consumption.
A chiplet is one part of a processing module that makes up a larger integrated circuit like a computer processor.
The chiplet architecture allows chip designers freedom from the constraints of a single, monolithic chip for processing. By leveraging multiple smaller chips, interconnected in a single package, chip designers can create the equivalent of a “system-on-a-chip” (SoC) in a package.
Chiplets enable dramatically better performance, smaller device sizes, and better device reliability, the company said.
“We are leading the pack to bring high performance, power-optimised, affordable, and scalable solutions that enable next-gen large language models (LLM), generative AI, automotive, data centres, and mobile computing globally,” Han said.
In July last year, Silicon Box launched its $2-billion advanced semiconductor manufacturing foundry in Singapore. The 73,000 square metre facility in Tampines is designed to manufacture semiconductor chiplet interconnections for artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and wearables.
The company revealed that the packaging factory in Singapore has been in mass production for early customers since October 2023, shortly after the grand opening of the factory on July 20, 2023.
Singapore accounts for 11% of the global semiconductor market share and approximately 20% of global semiconductor equipment is manufactured in the city-state, according to reports.
Silicon Box’s self-valuation of over $1 billion makes it Southeast Asia’s first unicorn in 2024. The region only produced one unicorn in 2023—eFishery, which garnered a valuation of over $1 billion after it raised $108 million in May.
In 2022, eight startups earned the much sought-after unicorn tag, while in 2021, the number stood at 23.