Photo credit: Krosslinker / Coleen Rivas on unsplash

Beat the Heat

• From a record-breaking pool of over 1,200 submissions across more than 100 countries, 500-backed advanced materials company Krosslinker emerged as the champion of the Cool Earth track at The Liveability Challenge (TLC) 2025 by Temasek Foundation for their innovative work with aerogels, securing S$1 million in catalytic funding to scale their climate-friendly solution.
• Co-founder & CEO Dr. Gayathri Natarajan shared that while aerogels are widely known as the best thermal insulators available, Krosslinker has developed a way to produce them faster and more affordably, making the material more accessible.
• Taking it a step further, the team transformed aerogel into a paintable form, enabling a wider application across data centres, industrial pipelines, and residential rooftops —  with the ability to reduce surface temperatures by up to 10°C and ambient temperatures by up to 5°C.
• In a country like Singapore, where $1.5B is spent annually on cooling, and air-conditioning uses a third of the nation’s electricity, Krosslinker’s solution presents a scalable, energy-efficient alternative for heat mitigation.
• With the funding, the team plans to launch large-scale pilot studies to trial the paint in Singapore’s tropical climate, before expanding to other Southeast Asian markets.
• Watch the full interview on Channel News Asia.