Deeptech startup SixSense bags $8.5M from Peak XV, others
The Singapore-based company has developed an AI-powered platform aimed at improving efficiency and reducing errors in semiconductor manufacturing.
Deeptech startup SixSense has raised $8.5 million in a funding round led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia India & SEA), with participation from Alpha Intelligence Capital, Febe, and others.
The Singapore-based company has developed an AI-powered platform to improve efficiency and reduce errors in semiconductor manufacturing.
Founded by engineers Akanksha Jagwani and Avni Agarwal, SixSense addresses a longstanding challenge in the chipmaking industry: how to make better use of the vast amount of data generated during production. Factories routinely collect information such as defect images and machine signals, but much of this data remains underused.
SixSense’s platform turns this raw data into real-time insights, helping manufacturers identify and address issues early, improve output quality, and reduce production losses.
With the new funding, the company plans to expand into key semiconductor markets, including Malaysia, Taiwan, and the US. It also intends to strengthen partnerships with AI-focused inspection equipment manufacturers, improving on-site integration of its platform.
A portion of the investment will go towards advanced research and development, shifting from isolated inspection tools to line-level intelligence, where multiple machines share data and work together through AI to support real-time, factory-wide decision-making.
This complexity is central to why semiconductor manufacturing remains one of the most difficult areas of modern industry.
“Making a single chip is one of the most demanding feats in modern manufacturing—it happens in cleanrooms thousands of times cleaner than hospital operating rooms and relies on precise coordination across hundreds of machines and thousands of ultra-sensitive steps,” said Jagwani, Co-founder and CEO of SixSense.
“Imagine trying to build a skyscraper out of microscopic Lego blocks, where a tiny shift in one brick—invisible to the eye—can collapse the whole structure. That’s what chip factories face every day,” she added. One of the biggest challenges, she said, is spotting early signs of failure before they escalate into costly defects or delays—a task where AI has become increasingly essential.
By analysing large volumes of production data, SixSense's platform detects and predicts failure patterns. This allows factories to move from reactive inspection to proactive control, catching rare or small defects that may go unnoticed, reducing the chances of rejecting good chips, and identifying early process shifts before they cause wider issues.
The system is already in use at semiconductor manufacturers, including GlobalFoundries and JCET. So far, more than 100 million chips have been processed through the SixSense platform.
According to the company, customers have reported improvements such as 30% faster production cycles, a 1%-2% increase in yield by recovering chips that would have been wrongly rejected, and up to 20% fewer errors, along with over 90% less manual effort.
The platform is compatible with inspection equipment from leading vendors, covering over 60% of the global market.
Co-founder and CTO Avni Agarwal said the system is designed to be hardware-agnostic, transparent, and accessible for engineers. “Process engineers can fine-tune models using their own fab data, deploy them in under two days, and trust the results, all without writing a single line of code,” she said.
Edited by Kanishk Singh