Silicon Box, a Singapore-based semiconductor design and device integration services startup, is preparing to raise about $150 million in fresh capital to accelerate its expansion plans, according to a top executive.
Speaking at a panel discussion at DealStreetAsia’s Asia PE-VC Summit 2025 in Singapore last week, Silicon Box co-founder and CEO BJ Han described the fundraising as part of an ongoing strategy rather than a one-off round. “We are in the process of capital raising,” he said.
“Our one-time capital raise is $150 million. Ever since the company’s founding, I’ve been raising the capital… there’s like three months of no capital raising and nine months of capital raising cycle I’ve been going through.”
He explained that Silicon Box prefers to raise funds in smaller, regular tranches to maintain flexibility and ensure each injection of capital aligns with project milestones. “Capital intensity is the nature of business,” Han said.
“When you inject the capital, you have to know what you’re doing. If A is not working, you have to have a contiguous plan of B and C and D… the important part of dealing with the capital is how to make the capital more flexible.”
While Han did not disclose specific investors for the upcoming round, market sources told DealStreetAsia that Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund, Indonesia Investment Authority (INA), is in discussions to participate.
INA declined to comment on market rumour, stating that they “only announce investments once they are finalised and agreed with our partners.”
DealStreetAsia has reached out to Han for further confirmation regarding this.
Founded by semiconductor veterans Han, Sehat Sutardja, and Weili Dai, Silicon Box emerged from stealth in 2021, claimed to have achieved unicorn status in late 2023, and quickly gained attention for its large-scale chiplet packaging—a technology that allows multiple small chips to be combined into a single high-performance package.
Han said the new funds will help rapidly ramp up its existing factory and prepare for a second facility in Singapore.
“The final goal is filling the factory as quickly as possible… anticipating it to be filled in two to three years,” he said. He added that a second site is already on the drawing board.
Diversification is key
Han also highlighted the need to diversify the company’s product offerings to avoid overreliance on any single technology wave. “We actually started with some AI chips and some of the EV automotive—both areas are very hot currently,” he said.
“Now we’re expanding into the general market, to mobile communication. We’re shipping products like satellite, space rover. The next big thing coming in is robots and humanoids that we are working on.”
Silicon Box’s capital strategy reflects the long-cycle nature of the semiconductor industry. Han pointed out that even global leaders such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) experienced decades of fluctuating cash flow before becoming consistently profitable.
“Capital intensity is the nature of business.. At a certain point, it will stop. Then you’ll be in trouble because it becomes sunk cost… You have to deal with something up front, well thought of, of what to do.”
The company’s strategy of raising funds in recurring cycles aims to match the capital demands of building out its advanced packaging capacity while retaining operational discipline.
“Semiconductor is a really, really long cycle… you have to come up with quantified milestones to three different angles of how to acquire customers… and then you make a design meeting, and then qualification, and then volume sustainability,” he said. “Usually, investors are pretty satisfied with that. Step-wise, quantified milestones achieved.”
According to DealStreetAsia’s DATA VANTAGE, Silicon Box has raised a total of $508.37 million since its incorporation. Sutardja Family LLC holds the largest stake in the company with 11.8%. This is followed by SG-based investor Ally Capital Holdings (8.35%), Han Byung Joon (8.33%), and British-based asset manager Praesidium Capital Pte Ltd (8.28%).
It last raised $99.86 million in a Series B2 funding round from a host of investors led by US-based VC firm Prysm Capital in August 2024. Event Horizon Capital, Sutardja Family, and UMC Capital participated in the round.
In July 2023, the company 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 AI, electric vehicles, and wearables.
A year later, in December 2024, the company built a 3.2-billion-euro ($3.5 billion) new plant in Novara, northern Italy, of which 1.3 billion euros was backed by a direct grant from the European Commission. The plant is expected to be operational in the second half of 2025, with initial production planned for Q1 2028.
According to its press release in July, Silicon Box reported a revenue of $1.87 million in the first year of production at its Singapore factory in 2024 from pre-qualified customers’ production and R&D investments from major customers.
However, its filings with Singapore’s ACRA for the financial year ended December 31, 2023, showed that losses ballooned by 224.7% to $17.11 million, while revenue stood at $105k. The losses were due to the need to purchase property, plant, and equipment for operations.
According to DealStreetAsia DATA VANTAGE‘s report titled “Semiconductors: Southeast Asia’s strategic ascent”, Southeast Asia is leveraging its long-standing strength in outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing (OSAT)—which plays a foundational role in determining the performance, reliability and scalability of silicon systems—to seize a rare chance to climb the global chip value chain amid shifting geopolitics.
Despite supplying about 20% of worldwide chip exports valued at approximately $234 billion in 2023, according to the ASEAN Statistics Web Portal, the region captures only 5-10% of a chip’s value and must move upstream to avoid low-margin dependence.
