(L-R) GreatAsic founder and CEO Ong Chin Hu and co-founder and CTO Michael Liew Woon Chin
Malaysia’s GreatAsic Technology, a specialised chip design company focused on delivering high-performance, custom silicon solutions for “tomorrow’s technologies”, has closed a US$6.9 million pre‑Series A round, led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India and joined by Ehsan Kapital and Gobi Partners.
The raise signals a concrete step in the country’s ambition to move beyond semiconductor assembly and testing towards front‑end chip design.
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The round will bankroll engineering hires, operational expansion, and accelerated development of GreatAsic’s planned silicon projects targeting data‑centre, automotive, and edge AI markets.
A domestic pivot to design
For decades, Southeast Asia’s semiconductor story has been dominated by manufacturing: wafer fabrication, assembly, test and packaging. Malaysia, in particular, has been a critical node for assembly and testing—the traditional “Made in Malaysia” role within global supply chains.
GreatAsic’s fundraise comes amid the Malaysian government’s National Semiconductor Strategy, which explicitly aims to cultivate design capabilities so local firms can produce not just assembled chips but also chips designed on home soil.
“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,” said Ong Chin Hu, GreatAsic’s founder and chief executive. “This funding lets us hire engineers, expand operations and accelerate our planned ASIC projects, and build a Malaysian semiconductor design ecosystem that endures.”
Access to Arm IP
A notable technical milestone for GreatAsic is its access to Arm Holdings’s semiconductor intellectual property. The startup is among the first Malaysian design houses to secure Arm Flexible Access (AFA) and Arm Neoverse Compute Subsystems (CSS) tokens, an important enabler for teams building modern SoCs for cloud and edge compute. The company says the AFA agreement is already formalised with the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA).
Arm’s IP ecosystems lower the barrier for fledgling design teams by providing pre‑validated cores and subsystem building blocks, reducing integration time and risk. For a regional startup, such access shortens the path from architecture to tape‑out and production. It increases the odds of competing for Asia‑Pacific customers that need customised silicon for AI inference, low‑latency automotive compute or specialised edge devices.
Founders with pedigree
GreatAsic’s leadership brings decades of silicon credentials. Founder Ong previously held senior roles at Intel, Marvell, and StarFive; co‑founder and CTO Michael Liew Woon Chin has held senior technical positions at Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, and StarFive. The team highlights multiple full‑mask tape‑outs and high‑volume production experience, turning what might otherwise be a speculative startup into a group with a demonstrable delivery track record.
Vertex Ventures’s Chan Yip Pang framed the investment as a bet on both the team and Malaysia’s broader strategic shift. “We have known this team for several years… 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,” Chan said.
Ecosystem stacking: parks, funds, and public backing
The pre‑Series A also features Ehsan Kapital, a semiconductor‑focused fund backed by Selangor’s state actors and ecosystem operator SIDEC, which runs the Malaysia Semiconductor IC Design Park. SIDEC’s chief executive, Yong Kai Ping, characterised GreatAsic’s raise as proof that the Park’s blend of infrastructure, EDA (electronic design automation) tools and public‑private support is beginning to yield competitive local design houses.
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Public investments in physical infrastructure and training, coupled with venture capital focused on semiconductors, are typical of successful design hubs. South Korea and Taiwan show that deep local talent combined with concentrated industry support can move countries up the value chain.
For Southeast Asia, however, the path is more fragmented: talent pools are dispersed across Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, while fabs remain largely located elsewhere in Asia. That makes momentum from firms like GreatAsic significant: they not only create jobs but prove the viability of larger local systems—EDA workflows, IP licensing, packaging and test partnerships—needed to scale chip design.
Why this matters for Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia’s AI and cloud markets are growing rapidly, and many enterprises in the region are exploring custom silicon to reduce costs and latency, or to gain control over AI performance. Custom ASICs and AI SoCs can offer energy efficiency and price advantages over off‑the‑shelf accelerators, if a local design house can reach production at scale.
GreatAsic’s focus on data centre, Edge AI, and automotive aligns with regional demand. Automotive electronics are growing in markets such as Thailand and Indonesia; edge AI devices, such as retail cameras, smart factories, and logistics sensors, are spreading across Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. A localised supply of custom silicon could shorten lead times, reduce integration complexity, and stimulate new product designs tailored to Southeast Asian conditions.
Risks and the long road ahead
Designing chips is capital- and time-intensive. Moving from design to tape‑out to production, and then to customers, involves technical risk, long sales cycles, and partnerships with fabs, foundries, and packaging providers. While GreatAsic has industry‑seasoned founders, the company will still need to demonstrate successful silicon and commercial traction to validate the thesis that Malaysia can sustain multiple design houses competing regionally.
The US$6.9 million raise is meaningful for early engineering growth and initial silicon runs. Still, broader scaling, especially if GreatAsic aims for high‑volume data‑centre chips, will require further capital, foundry access, and ecosystem partners. For now, the funding represents a timely proof point: regional venture capital is willing to back semiconductor design efforts within Southeast Asia, and public‑private initiatives are creating environments conducive to that investment.
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GreatAsic’s raise is not a guarantee of a new regional centre for chip design, but it is an indicator: Southeast Asia’s semiconductor narrative is evolving beyond assembly lines, as capital, talent and policy begin to converge around the higher‑value work of designing silicon.
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