HexSeed Technology, an Aberdeenshire deep-tech startup working on a diamond coating that keeps next-generation power chips cool, has raised more than £600,000 in early-stage funding.
The round was led by Cambridge climate-tech venture builder Carbon13, with participation from Aberdeen’s Net Zero Technology Centre and Italian venture firm Vento Ventures. The investment also unlocks a Partnership Grant from Innovate UK, awarded on a provisional basis earlier this year.
Founded in late 2025 and based in Banchory, HexSeed is developing a low-temperature process that grows ultra-thin diamond films directly onto finished gallium nitride (GaN) power chips — the type increasingly used inside AI data centres. Diamond is the best heat conductor known to materials science, and the coating is designed to pull heat away from the chip so it can run harder, last longer and use less energy.
The company is working with researchers at the University of Bristol on the process, and will use the new funding to move from laboratory demonstration to trials on commercial GaN devices, with data centre power conversion hardware as its first target market.
The International Energy Agency projects global data centre electricity consumption to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030 — slightly more than Japan’s total electricity use today — with AI the dominant driver.
“Data centres are on track to consume a significant share of UK grid capacity within the decade, and a large proportion of that energy is lost as heat in power conversion,” said HexSeed chief executive Mark Tandy. “This funding will allow us to take our low-temperature diamond coating technology which we are developing from laboratory demonstration to working GaN devices.”
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HexSeed was founded by Tandy (CEO, Oxford MBA), Dr Leonardo Santoni (CTO, PhD in chemistry, UCL) and Dr Michael Glerum (COO, PhD in engineering, Cambridge).
The deal adds another Aberdeenshire name to the growing list of Scottish companies positioning themselves at the physical layer of the AI infrastructure boom — the same boom that this month drew £300 million of debt financing to DataVita’s Lanarkshire data-centre expansion.
Read the full technical write-up on Silicon Scotland: Aberdeenshire startup HexSeed lands £600k to grow diamond on chips and cool AI data centres.
