(Kuala Lumpur, 30, November 2021)

Key ASIC Berhad announced today that it has issued a Letter of Intent (LOI) to a US foundry to acquire up to 100% of its shares and the said company has accepted the LOI. The foundry is a fab with Silicon Carbide (SiC) and developing Gallium Nitrite (GaN) technologies. The Company has performed the preliminary analysis and due diligence leading to the signing of the LOI and will be conducting the necessary due diligence before signing of the definitive agreement.

Silicon Carbide or SiC technologies are used largely in power devices that are needed in the Electronic Vehicles, charging stations, power grid, renewable energy, data centers and other applications.

Silicon has a breakdown voltage of around 600V, while silicon carbide can withstand voltages 5-10 times higher. Silicon carbide can switch at a rate that is nearly ten times faster than silicon, which results in smaller integrated circuit hence smaller chips.

Not only that the foundry has leading edge technologies in Silicon Carbide, additionally the foundry has also been developing Gallium Nitrite (GaN) technologies. Built-in GaN technology wall chargers are generally more reliable and lightweight than traditional devices. This is because they tend to have safety features built-in. It is also charging the connected devices at a much faster rate along with performance improvements over traditional chargers.

The global chip shortage is expected to continue in the next few years due to the surge in demand of smart phones, tablets, notebooks, and networking products triggered by the pandemic and the rapid growth of the Electronic Vehicles. As shown in the market research, the Battery Electric Vehicles has been growing 64% to 74% has been recorded since 2016.

Silicon Carbide market size worth is forecasted to be USD7.1B by 2027 at CAGR of 16% reported by Market Research Future.

Today, a conventional car would use about 300 chips and an electronic car would require as many as 3,000 chips including many power devices.

“The strategic move to acquire the compound semiconductor technology fab is timely for the Company to expand into the fast-growing Electronic Vehicles and fast charging market,” said Mr. Eg Kah Yee, Chairman and CEO of Key ASIC. “We intend to build additional capacity by expanding the existing facilities at the fab and also new facilities in Asia to serve the Asia fastest growing market in Electronic Vehicles,” he added.

The fab is currently making chips for the automotive module manufacturers, car makers and power grid equipment producers in the US. The fab is expected to play a significant role in the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that has been passed in the US Congress recently.

The LOI is expected to lead to the signing of the definitive agreement as the next step in this corporate exercise.

About the Key ASIC:

About the Key ASIC:Key ASIC, a public listed company on Bursa Malaysia (0143) specializes in developing IPs and provide ASIC/SoC design services for fabless design companies and system companies. The IPs are also developed specific for foundries to enable access of technologies by the fabless design companies. The Company has been producing IoT SoC as well as AI neural network chips for digital transformation of various industries.

(Petaling Jaya, 25 January 2021) Key ASIC announced today that it has inked a contract valued at RM21,000,000 for first part of the project with Canvas Technology to provide product, technology and design IP development strategy, planning and implementation for a wafer fab. The project is planned to have multiple parts and contracts of subsequent parts are expected to follow in the near future.

To date, the market capitalization of semiconductors has exceeded USD4 trillion, powered by the digitalization of economy globally. In the past two years, there is a surge on the construction new fabs or repurpose of existing wafer fabs. Reported by SEMI in August 2019, 33 new wafer fabs were under construction and over 50 of the existing fabs are repurposed for the current technologies to meet the market trend. Expectedly, leading this wave of development is China with spending of USD24B followed by Taiwan with spending of $13B and Europe and Mideast with spending of USD11B. This created a strong demand for licensing of technologies and Design IPs so that these expensive fabs can churn out chips at the soonest, reducing the time to revenue.

KeyWare™, the Standard Cell libraries that are ultra-low power or high performance is uniquely giving the wafer fabs a strong competitive advantage. Chips that are designed using the libraries of ultra-low power will be able to reduce power consumption by about 30% on the same process technology and chips that are designed using the Standard Cell libraries of high performance will be able to increase the speed of the chip by about 30% on the same process technology enabling the chip designers to develop highly competitive products in the market.

In addition to KeyWare™, the Company has a rich pool of silicon proven and standard compliant IPs such as USB2.0, USB3.0, PCi-e 1.2, PCi-e 2.0 and Ethernet, memory blocks, I/Os, a full spectrum of ADC, DAC and AFEs, total of more than 100 IP blocks that are commonly used in the design of SoCs. These IPs are essential for the design of SoCs in IOT, AI, smart home, industry 4.0, consumer and communication.

“The steep growth of new wafer fabs in the past two years has created strong demand for technologies and silicon proven SoC platform-based IP. With the rapid development of IOT and AI coupled with the severe shortage of chips and capacity across the board, the demand for technologies and Design IPs will continue to grow in the foreseeable future,” said Mr. Eg Kah Yee, Chairman and CEO of Key ASIC.

About Key ASIC:

About Key ASIC:Key ASIC Berhad (Stock Code: 0143) is a public listed company on Mainboard of Bursa Malaysia. It specializes design and manufacturing of IOT chips and system, connecting any electronics and non-electronic items to the Internet. MCard and MDrive are the IOT products currently shipping in the market. It also offers turnkey ASIC design service and SoC design and manufacturing. Its customers are largely in the US, Europe and Asia. It has offices in Malaysia, Taiwan and Singapore.