A startup called xMEMS Labs Inc. says it will enable a new generation of smaller, better performing artificial intelligence-powered consumer devices after raising $21 million in a late-stage round to commercialize its novel fan-on-chip thermal management technology.

The Series D round was led by Boardman Bay Capital Management and saw participation from a host of other investors, including Cloudview Capital, CDIB-TEN Capital, Harbinger Venture Capital, SIG Asia Investments and others.

The startup is pioneering a new kind of semiconductor cooling technology, which it calls “piezoMEMS.” It has developed tiny micro-electromechanical systems that leverage the inverse piezoelectric effect to make special conductive materials contract or expand when voltage is applied to them. It uses this effect to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy to excite an integrated silicon membrane and generate airflow that’s used to cool electronics equipment.

According to xMEMS, its piezoMEMS-based micro-coolers are “fully solid-state,” unlike the fan-based cooling systems found in today’s electronics devices. They’re also more compact, which makes them ideal for the smaller, thinner, lighter and better-performing AI devices that are expected to emerge in the coming years.

The startup says it has developed two products based on its piezoMEMS technology so far. Sycamore is the world’s thinnest and lightest high-fidelity MEMS loudspeaker, designed to deliver rich, full-range audio in slim form-factor devices such as headphones, AI glasses and smartwatches.

It has also developed µCooling, which is the first chip-scale, solid-state air-moving system that’s designed to enable vibration-free thermal management in compact devices such as smartphones, tablets and solid-state drives.

XMEMS said its power-efficient cooling technology will have a tremendous impact on device design, paving the way for smaller devices that can deliver greater compute that won’t overheat when used for extended periods of time. It’s particularly promising for the next-generation of “edge AI” devices, such as smartphones and smartwatches that run AI inference locally, on the device to reduce latency.

Until now, products such as smartphones and AI glasses have been limited in terms of their computational capacity, because if the chipset is too powerful, the device overheats, degrading the electronics inside. With xMEMS’ µCooling system, that should no longer be a problem.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Joseph Jiang said thermal management is a challenge that has confronted almost every consumer device manufacturer. They want to build the next generation of AI-enabled products, but the need to keep them cool means they have to sacrifice size and weight and make them much bulkier than desired.

“Our piezoMEMS platform solves this challenge,” Jiang said. “With the support of our investors, we’re expanding manufacturing and fueling the next wave of piezoMEMS innovation.”

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said xMEMS may be onto something with its thermal management tech, because cooling is one of the major factors that limits both device performance and data center capacity. While the startup is primarily talking about devices, the analyst believes its technology could also be helpful in expanding the compute capacity of both existing and new data centers.

“The company’s piezoMEMS technology is promising for next-generation processor architectures and it could be useful in many applications because it’s effective, it doesn’t consume too much power and it does not take up much space,” the analyst explained. “We’ll probably see it in smartphones and wearable devices first, but it will likely take a few years before there’s any widespread adoption of this tech.”

With the funding from today’s round, xMEMS plans to accelerate mass production of its cooling systems and commercialize the technology globally. It reckons it has already engaged with dozens of the world’s leading consumer technology companies, and is now ready to take it to the next level.

Boardman Bay Capital Chief Investment Officer Will Graves said he believes xMEMS will facilitate a dramatic shift in AI hardware design. “Its technology directly addresses the key pain points for today’s AI devices – managing heat, conserving space and delivering crystal-clear audio in increasingly compact products,” he said. “We think piezoMEMS will become a foundational building block for AI hardware.”