XMEMS starts mass-producing chips that cool AI glasses, smartphones and data centers

XMEMS starts mass-producing chips that cool AI glasses, smartphones and data centers

Silicon chip startup xMEMS Labs Inc. today said it has started mass production of its XMC-2400 and XMC-4800 chips for cooling artificial intelligence hardware.

No one has commercialized solid-state active cooling at this scale before, according to the company.

The chips are aimed at AI hardware running into heat limits in two places. Conventional fans “simply cannot fit” in AI glasses and smartphones that still need active heat removal, said Mike Housholder, vice president and general manager of the thermal management business unit at xMEMS. For data centers, the company is targeting solid-state drives, laser modules and other parts left outside the liquid cooling that increasingly surrounds high-power processors.

The technology behind both chips came out of the company’s speaker business, where an electrical signal flexes a thin silicon membrane to produce sound. In the cooling chips, the same type of membrane moves air. Device makers can route the air down narrow channels to a processor or a memory chip, the company said, since it builds high pressure.

Nothing in the package spins. Because each device is a single piece of silicon, Housholder said, it could eventually be packaged together with the AI processors it cools.

Personal SSDs and glasses built for AI or extended reality are the target for the XMC-2400. The XMC-4800 moves more air, enough for thermally demanding AI smartphones as well as enterprise SSDs and other lower-power subsystems in the data center. In July, xMEMS introduced a third, smaller model, the XMC-1200, to cool the light engines and processors inside smart glasses.

Customers testing the chips have cut temperatures by 10 to 25 degrees Celsius at the chip and system level in glasses, smartphones and SSDs, xMEMS said. At 7.42 by 9.48 by 1.13 millimeters, the XMC-2400 moves up to 28 cubic centimeters of air per second against as much as 1,300 pascals of back pressure on about 150 milliwatts. The larger XMC-4800 tops out at 48 cubic centimeters per second.

Founded in 2018, xMEMS is a venture capital-backed startup that made its name with speakers for earbuds and headphones. In October last year it raised $21 million in a Series D round led by Boardman Bay Capital Management LLC to fund the move into mass production.

The first commercial products built around the XMC-2400 are expected to reach the market in early 2027. Live demonstrations are planned for CES in Las Vegas in January.

Image: xMEMS