The core of the AI era is ultimately electricity. To keep high-power servers from stopping, the dam (capacitor) that stably supplies electricity has to get bigger. Hexapro has dramatically increased the capacity of this dam by drilling trillions of nanoscale holes inside a semiconductor based on anodizing, an aluminum surface treatment rooted in traditional materials technology.
Hexapro is a corporations that makes anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) membranes with a nano-porous structure using anodizing, an aluminum surface treatment method. Chief Executive Kim Tae-seon, who earned a master's in chemical engineering from Seoul National University and spent 20 years as a veteran patent attorney starting in 2003, founded the company in 2022.
After serving in Samsung SDI's legal team and as a trial examiner at the Korean Intellectual Property Office (grade-4 senior technical officer in an open-to-private sector position), Kim, who had seen countless fundamental technologies, decided to pursue direct commercialization with AAO. This material is drawing attention as a key material that determines the performance of AI Semiconductor chips with surging power demand and of high-capacity capacitors for electric vehicles, which store and release electricity.
AAO is a promising material first proposed in the 1980s at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Thanks to its structure in which nanoscale (nm) micropores are uniformly arranged like a honeycomb, its applications are endless, including semiconductors and biofilters. But the conventional method required a melt away process that dissolves and removes the aluminum substrate, making manufacturing expense high and large-area production difficult, so it remained for research use.
Kim broke through this limitation with a separation technology. By developing a method that peels off only the AAO layer from the aluminum substrate, the substrate can be reused repeatedly.
Kim said, We cut the supply price to less than one-third of the conventional level and, for the first time in the world, succeeded in realizing an 8-inch large area with through-hole structures, adding, We can now stamp out 50 to 100 sheets of AAO per aluminum piece, instead of just one.
Where Hexapro's technology shines most is the 3D silicon capacitor market. A capacitor is a component that stores and releases power, and the larger the electrode area, the greater the capacity. Using Hexapro's AAO membrane, the surface area can be expanded more than 1,000 times compared with the conventional planar structure, enabling ultra-high-capacity chip production.
Kim explained, A single 3D capacitor using our material is enough for a circuit board that used to require 10 to 20 MLCCs (multilayer ceramic capacitors), adding, We are challenging a market that Japan's Murata, the world's No. 1 in MLCCs, commercialized after seven years of development, with a more economical and efficient material.
Hexapro is currently conducting proof-of-concept (PoC) tests with domestic semiconductor conglomerates. Hexapro is now raising a Series A round of 2 billion won. It has already completed seed funding from TIPS alumni status and LF Corp. Investment, and its cumulative research and development spending totals 2.2 billion won. In particular, it secured technical credibility by being selected for a 9.0 billion won nanoscale materials technology development project by the Ministry of Science and ICT.
The use of these funds is clear: building a dedicated mass-production line for semiconductors. Kim said, For now we are responding with general industrial equipment, but we need dedicated equipment with temperature- and humidity-controlled chambers and automated lines suitable for semiconductor processes, adding, By the first half of 2026, we will add a new line capable of manufacturing areas of 8 inches or larger and secure production capacity for annual sales of at least 10.0 billion won.
Hexapro has completed internalization of technology, from materials to packaging processes, by recruiting experts who developed MLCCs at Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Ph.D.s from the Seoul National University Semiconductor Research Center.
Throughout the interview, Kim emphasized the role of venture capital. Kim said, Recently, VCs (venture capital firms) tend to invest only in startups that generate revenue immediately, which is challenging, but materials companies like EcoPro also endured difficult early stages, adding, Hexapro started with technology from Germany, a leading tech nation, but will be a game changer that turns AAO, which remained at the level of possibility, into an industry standard through the power of Korea's materials, parts and equipment sector.