Lam Research recently held its Lam Capital Venture Competition contest at its headquarters in Fremont, California. I attended the event to get a flavor for the startups within the semiconductor and semiconductor manufacturing equipment space.
It turned on the market was a vibrant atmosphere on the event, which was sponsored by Lam Capital. The first time it was held in person, the event drew a whole lot of parents, including investors like Weili Dai, and her husband Sehat Sutardja, the founders of Marvell, in addition to other funds and company VCs that Lam works with. At the event, I spoke with Audrey Charles, vice chairman of corporate development at Lam Research and head of Lam Capital.
She said a complete of 70 startups applied to the competition, and 10 made presentations to the judges on the event. Crystal Sonic wound up winning the event and the grand prize of $250,000. Lam itself has done greater than 20 investments, mostly within the $1 million to $10 million range. There is more activity because of the CHIPS and Science Act, which authorized $50 billion in government support for increase semiconductor manufacturing within the U.S. as a strategic technological priority.
The judges included Weili Dai, serial entrepreneur (Silicon Box, MeetKai, Marvell) and investor; Rene Do, senior investment director, SK Hynix; Ben Haskell, investment director, Lam Capital; Amir Salek, senior managing director, Cerberus Capital Management; Vera Schroeder, partner, Safar Partners; and Lucas Tsai, senior director at TSMC North America.
With investments within the semiconductor ecosystem, we’ll discover soon if AI has a dramatic impact on the flexibility to construct ever-more-sophisticated semconductor chips, or if the industry will face the barriers of the laws of physics, which have slowed down the progress of Moore’s Law in recent yr. Charles is optimistic that technological progress will proceed.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
VentureBeat: How long have you ever been doing this? What’s your way of introducing the event to individuals who don’t learn about it?
Audrey Charles: This is our third competition. The first one was in (2019) at MIT. The second was at UC Berkeley in 2022). It’s our first time doing it on site. We wanted to do this, as I said, to have more internal people come. But how we get the word out about it, importantly, may be very multifaceted. Of course we’ve got the Lam Capital website. We do promoting, a push through social. But truthfully, numerous the businesses you see pitching today, most of them will come through networking – through the funds that we work with, through other corporate VCs that we participate with. Then they’ll provide visibility, that this competition is ongoing, what the theme is, what the structure is, and encourage firms they think could also be an excellent fit to use.
VentureBeat: How many candidates were there this time?
Charles: There were greater than 70 applicants. Which is unquestionably a high. That’s a extremely good number for something like this, and really prime quality applicants. We chosen all the way down to 12, simply to make sure that that everybody could make it, and we’ve got 10 firms pitching today.
VentureBeat: How many judges are there?
Charles: There are six judges. They pick the ultimate one. We’ll have a runner up and a final one. The one gets the prize money, $250,000.
VentureBeat: How many persons are coming today?
Charles: We had greater than 250 registered. About 100-plus external participants, after which about 150 internal as well.
VentureBeat: Are numerous those outside investors, investors who is perhaps all for these firms?
Charles: Exactly. You’ll see a representation of that within the panels, and just going around. We have a mixture of CVCs, people from other corporate enterprise groups we work with, that we’re connected with, after which others from enterprise funds as well. You’ll have some startups who didn’t get chosen, but are all for being here and networking with people who find themselves here.
VentureBeat: What kind of patterns and trends did you see within the applicants? Is there a concentration of pitches in a category?
Charles: It was very diverse by the character of how we did our canvassing, relative to going to different funds specialized in numerous areas. We saw a theme of individuals highlighting connections to AI. You saw that coming through in the primary couple of pitches. That’s the strongest theme that got here through this yr.
When we take a look at applicants, we return to Lam Capital’s investment pieces, which is around semiconductors tied to Lam. You can see that coming through today as well, whether it’s within the advanced packaging space. Interconnect, Dede called that out on his panel. Things that could make us higher, faster, cheaper, more efficient. Automation, smart automation varieties of things. Disruptive innovation within the markets we serve.
VentureBeat: How much has Lam invested through Lam Capital?
Charles: We’ve done greater than 20 investments. When we are available in, typically it’s pretty early in the corporate. Lining as much as where we predict is the worth proposition from a CVC perspective, and likewise how Lam thinks it may well help essentially the most, and potentially also get essentially the most value as well, earlier on the corporate’s life cycle. Again, typically series A, series B. Not pre-seed, as they said this morning. Typically in those rounds we are likely to be significant investors. Those checks run within the $1-10 million range. But it really depends. I don’t have the precise capital in.
VentureBeat: What inspired the considering behind the competition?
Charles: I used to be in a position to go to the last one. That was the primary one I had attended. It’s just really inspiring, the view into the disruptive technology and what the founders are doing. That’s primary. Number two, it’s also this unique forum within the semi industry, to bring together the room filled with those who we’ve got today. People really appreciate it. If you walk around and check with people, everyone says, “This is great, I just met such-and-such.” There’s numerous knowingness within the people in there, but there’s also numerous latest connections to be made. People really value doing that on this compact forum, with numerous great content.
For Lam Capital we feel it’s an ideal opportunity for us to get our name out and facilitate it. We can change into higher known to the startups that we will probably want to work with in the longer term. We can highlight to those who we’ve done this and we’ve got these connections. There’s public representation of the businesses which have had positive outcomes for this reason. It’s multi-tiered.
VentureBeat: Do you may have any sense of what the environment seems like, having passed through this again? The optimism and pessimism within the environment?
Charles: It was very present within the investing panel. From a semiconductor startup ecosystem perspective, it’s incrementally more positive. There’s more interest within the segment. There are more people, more VCs who’re launching semiconductor-focused practices and searching for partners there. It’s still a challenge. It’s a difficult industry to grasp. What we do is pretty hard, especially if you happen to’re on the hardware side. It might be capital-intensive. High barriers to entry. Getting to proof of concept shouldn’t be trivial.
That said, there are plenty of positive developments in the overall ecosystem in the intervening time which are making things more positive, and doubtless encouraging more people to pursue their ideas or go down this path. That goes as well to not only the enterprise funding, however the support and interest driven by things just like the CHIPS and Science Act. Government being very vocal concerning the innovation ecosystem is significant to the long-term sustainability of the industry. Whether it’s through universities or research collaborations, there’s a more positive climate in the intervening time.
VentureBeat: Were there some smaller things within the CHIPS Act that assist in the startup area, other than all the massive manufacturing?
Charles: I don’t know the specifics, to be honest. I wouldn’t need to comment on it. That’s a reasonably detailed space. But I’d say that–you saw numerous the startups today talking about ties to universities. All of these items, it’s like a virtuous cycle. R&D gets more funding. Then you may have more programs which you could fund. The ability to support more entrepreneurs. And then these very serendipitous spin-outs that start from universities.
VentureBeat: Do you see more diversity among the many entrepreneurs? Are they coming from a big selection of walks of life?
Charles: It’s not something I even have data on, but I’d say–again, it’s inspiring to see all the different sorts of individuals you meet. If you take a look at the pitch participants today, we’ve got someone from Singapore, Korea, the U.K., near home. Everyone, every team may be very different, with different backgrounds. But ultimately they’re all here attempting to drive success in something they think is enabling the longer term of semiconductors. I do think there’s numerous diversity. People are coming from numerous different places.
VentureBeat: Back to a number of the optimism across the industry level, there had been numerous talk concerning the end of Moore’s Law. I ponder how much that either becomes the chance for startups to pursue, or a giant barrier that everybody worries about.
Charles: It’s true. If we were having this conversation seven or eight years ago–there was more of a conversation around, “What does next appear to be?” Now, if we return to the drivers within the chart, it’s across the enablement of those different technologies. For example, 3D scaling, advanced packaging. That’s emerged as one in every of the basic ways by which performance gain is enabled across just about all devices and segments.
Back to the ability revolution, EVs, the explosion amongst what we’ve seen in what we’d have called the more mature specialty technologies, and the way much innovation that’s driving in that space. Couldn’t comprehend that, I believe, seven to 10 years ago. But today–there’s an extended method to go, but we will see this autonomous, connected, smart driving future.
We don’t know exactly what it’s going to appear to be, but we all know that AI at the sting, or AI on phones, goes to be something that drives rather a lot. From a fundamental driver perspective, the interconnectedness of this industry to what our lives are going to be like–it’s there of course, and there’s numerous opportunity to proceed to innovate and determine how we’re going to resolve a few of these big problems.
VentureBeat: Does AI come into this a part of the industry as a welcome injection of innovation? Or do people worry about it? Too much AI taking all the roles away?
Charles: I do think it’s seen very much as an enabler. It goes back to this complexity challenge. The complexity today, solving a few of these problems – the products that we make, the processes we develop, the variety of potential permutations and combos of development parameters to deliver the result the client needs – it’s really tough while you’re working on the angstrom level, which is where we work. Being in a position to have the ability of AI-assisted tools is definitely something that’s seen as an enormous potential profit in shaping the curve as we go forward, making things possible.
We have an article that was published in Nature talking about our perspective on that. We’d be glad to share it. It doesn’t go too deep, but the important thing takeaway is that if you happen to can mix these AI-assisted process development tools, which we call Semiverse Solutions, with experienced employees, process engineers and so forth, that’s how you’ll get one of the best results. That’s going to make things possible. It’s how we will proceed scaling in the longer term, how we will proceed to recover, how our customers can proceed to recover.
And after all there’s the workforce. I’m sure you’ve seen rather a lot about a number of the potential workforce shortages on this industry, to sustain what customers must run their fabs and their operations. AI-assisted development, advanced automation in fabs, that’s something that might be very powerful from the standpoint of doing what we’d like to do.
VentureBeat: Related to the CHIPS Act, do you see numerous activity across the board within the U.S. now? Startups, but additionally the notion that numerous your equipment is perhaps going into U.S factories?
Charles: We noted that there’s been greater than $300 billion that’s been identified throughout the world. That’s an ideal opportunity for the industry overall. There have been numerous announcements about investments happening. That’s a really positive opportunity for us to work closely with our customers.
The event is absolutely about giving us the chance to tap into revolutionary firms, to represent what Lam does, and to be good participants within the ecosystem. By having this connection and representing them, we will bring numerous that technology innovation spirit into Lam as well. We might help these firms grow.
