PITTSBURGH, Jan. 21, 2025 — NovoLINC, a thermal technology startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon University, announced seed funding led by M Ventures, with participation from Foothill Ventures and TDK Ventures. NovoLINC’s breakthrough nanocomposite thermal solutions reduce thermal resistance to an industry-record low (< 1mm²-K/W), according to company co-founders, CSO Prof. Sheng Shen and CTO Dr. Rui Cheng. In addition, the founders of NovoLINC have received grant funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Innovation and ARPA-E’s COOLERCHIPS Programs.
The ever-increasing performance and power requirements of electronic chipsets directly result in enormous heat generation. Over the last decade, NVIDIA GPUs have seen power consumption grow from approximately 250W to 1,200W for flagship models. Similarly, power consumption for CPUs from Intel and AMD has nearly tripled between 2019 and 2024. However, advancements in thermal interface solutions have not kept pace, making them one of the primary bottlenecks in achieving efficient cooling and effective heat dissipation, especially as AI datacenters transition to liquid cooling. NovoLINC’s technology directly addresses these challenges by providing its products to semiconductor companies and hyperscalers.
Prof. Shen and Dr. Cheng commented: “With its unique nanostructured composite design, the NovoLINC technology offers outstanding thermal performance and reliability for cooling high-power electronics, such as CPUs and GPUs, making it particularly valuable for the rapidly growing data center industry.”
“Our team is collaborating closely with industrial partners to accelerate the manufacturing scaleup and the commercialization of our technology to meet the surging needs of high-power computing and sustainable AI data center operations,” added company co-founder and CEO, Dr. Ning Li.
Tobias Egle, M Ventures’ associate commented: “Efficient thermal interface solutions have become a crucial aspect of data center infrastructure due to the increasing power in packages, shrinking features, and heterogeneous integration of chips. We are delighted to welcome the NovoLINC team to our semiconductor portfolio.”
Eric Rosenblum, Foothill Ventures’ Managing Partner, added: “There is a current goldrush in the tech community around AI applications, supported by ever more powerful chips and faster connections. However, there is an increasing realization that this boom is capped by energy consumption and heat dissipation. NovoLINC addresses both head-on, and we are thrilled to back them as they start this journey.”
“Cooling contributes to 40% of data center’s energy consumption. NovoLINC’s thermal interface solutions offer the industry’s lowest thermal resistance, and scalable solutions to keep up with the ever-increasing power and heat generated by the next-generation computing chips. We are excited to partner with NovoLINC to make chip cooling more efficient,” remarked Tina Tosukhowong, TDK Ventures’ Investment Director.
About NovoLINC
NovoLINC is a pioneering startup in advanced thermal interface solutions, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA. NovoLINC has developed a unique nanostructured materials system and proprietary manufacturing process to revolutionize thermal management for high-performance computing, data centers, automobile, aerospace and power electronics. With a team of industry experts and partnerships with leading technology companies, NovoLINC aims to enable sustainable scaling of semiconductor and data-center industries. Interested partners may contact the company via [email protected].
About M Ventures
M Ventures is the strategic, corporate venture capital fund of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, investing in Biotechnology and Technology. M Ventures covers the areas of Healthcare drug development, Life Science tools, Electronics and Frontier Technology & Sustainability. We invest – with dual strategic and financial foci – into visionary companies that find new ways to: treat the most challenging diseases, empower scientists with cutting-edge research and development tools, develop new solutions that change the way in which information is accessed, stored, processed, and displayed and address some of the most complex challenges in sustainability and technology convergence. For more information, visit www.m-ventures.com.
About Foothill Ventures
Foothill Ventures is a $250M AUM American venture capital firm, based in Los Altos, California. Foothill Ventures is among North America’s most active seed investors in semiconductors, and has backed companies such as d-Matrix, HyperLight, Tetramem, Metalenz, Aviva Links, Quintessent and others. For more information, visit www.foothill.ventures.
About TDK Ventures
TDK Ventures was established in 2019 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of TDK Corporation, the corporate venture company’s vision is to propel the digital and energy transformations of segments such as robotics and industrial, next-generation transportation, mixed reality and the wider IoT/IIoT markets. For more information, visit www.tdk-ventures.com.
SOURCE NovoLINC, Inc.
