Participated · Equity · May 2025

Finwave Semiconductor develops transistors and differentiated GaN-on-Si RF chips designed to optimize the potential of Gallium Nitride (GaN). Its portfolio includes GaN FinFETs, advanced E-mode MISHEMTs, and high-performance RF switches. The company's chips target a wide array of RF applications, including communications infrastructure (base stations, MIMO, small cells, land mobile radios, customer premise equipment, fixed wireless access), Wi‑Fi routers, satellite, radar, drones, anti-drones, test & measurement equipment, and medical equipment. Led by CEO Dr. Pierre-Yves Lesaicherre and based in Waltham, MA, Finwave positions its technology across both infrastructure and mobile markets. The company recently raised funding to accelerate revenue generation, expand its product portfolio, and continue developing its GaN-on-Si technology. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. Finwave Semiconductor is a Waltham, MA–based company that develops GaN transistors and 3DGaN technology for high‑frequency applications. Its 3DGaN technology and new transistor are designed to optimize Gallium Nitride (GaN) to support industries including 5G, AI, cloud computing, and electric and autonomous vehicles. Finwave says 3DGaN improves linearity, output power and efficiency in 5G mmWave systems while reducing costs for carriers. Founded in 2012 and led by CEO Dr. Bin Lu, the company has offices in Massachusetts and California and partners worldwide. The company raised $12.2M in a Series A and plans to use the proceeds to expand the team, product development activities and lab facilities.

Participated · Series D · Dec 2024

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Ayar Labs builds co-packaged optics that move data between chips with light instead of copper, reducing power consumption while boosting bandwidth for AI infrastructure. Its flagship TeraPHY optical engine is manufactured in concert with leading semiconductor partners and is designed to slot directly into existing accelerator and switch designs. By replacing traditional electrical I/O with optical links, the technology delivers significant performance gains and cost savings in power-constrained environments. Following its latest financing, the company plans to ramp production and testing capacity, open and staff a new office in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and deepen ecosystem partnerships to speed customer deployments. Ayar Labs’ CPO solution is already qualified for industry-standard fab, manufacturing, and packaging flows, positioning it for broad adoption. The company has raised a cumulative $870 million to date, providing substantial capital to execute its global expansion and commercialization roadmap.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2023

Efabless operates an open-source, community-driven platform for designing, sharing, prototyping and commercializing custom chips. The platform has executed approximately 1,000 designs and 500 tapeouts over the past two years and serves Fortune 100 companies, startups, universities and research institutions. Efabless aims to lower barriers in chip creation and to expand access for designers in markets such as IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company’s model is extensible to advanced packaging, software and systems, and it is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The business plans described in the article include continued product development, business development and marketing to grow its community and commercial adoption. Efabless operates a creator community platform for designing, developing, and commercializing integrated circuits, aiming to democratize electronics product creation. The platform supports both open-source ICs via a Google-partnered design-to-prototype solution and proprietary designs through its chipIgnite program. Efabless positions itself to reduce cost and time to market for proof-of-concept chips and to broaden access for chip experts, software and hardware developers across Fortune 100 companies, startups, and academia. The company highlights opportunity in markets like IoT and machine learning where custom silicon can deliver large performance and efficiency gains. Efabless plans to continue expanding its product capabilities and business development efforts, and to extend its model to advanced packaging, software, and systems. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Participated · Series H · Oct 2015

Aquantia develops high-speed connectivity solutions for data centers, enterprise and WLAN applications, including its AQrate technology that can increase network speeds to 5 Gbps on existing Cat 5e/Cat 6 cables up to 100m. The AQrate products were first sampled in late 2013 and are currently in mass production. The company is led by president and CEO Faraj Aalaei. Aquantia employs over 160 people. It has raised a total of $199m to date. The company stated it will use the new funds to continue to expand operations. Aquantia is a market leader in high-speed Ethernet connectivity solutions serving cloud, data center, mobile and enterprise customers. Its core products are 10Gigabit Ethernet ICs, and the company recently announced a low-power, 28nm generation of 10GBASE-T silicon aimed at expanding adoption among cloud service providers and corporate data centers. Aquantia positions 10GBASE-T as the fastest-growing 10GE connectivity solution and expects the technology to become dominant in switches and servers. The company emphasizes delivering versatile, high-performance connectivity while lowering total cost of ownership for OEM customers. Management highlights strong market tailwinds from exploding wireless traffic and has received industry recognition including the GSA Most Respected Private Company Award and Cisco’s New Emerging Technology Supplier Award. Aquantia is venture-backed and located in Milpitas, California, and has completed recent financing to support business expansion. Aquantia designs 10GBASE‑T PHY chipsets and 10Gigabit Ethernet ICs used in cloud and large-scale data center servers and switches. The company launched an industry-leading 40nm 10GBASE‑T PHY chipset in 2011 and targets LAN‑on‑Motherboard (LOM) platforms. Aquantia cites accelerating demand following Intel’s Romley platform introduction and market growth projections from Crehan Research. It is venture-backed and described as having strong tier‑1 VC and strategic investor support. Aquantia is headquartered in Silicon Valley (Milpitas, Calif.) and plans to establish a new design center in Russia to support chip design, software development, and product testing. The company positions its products as delivering high performance and lower total cost of ownership for OEM customers. Aquantia designs silicon solutions based on 10GBASE-T technology that enable storage and networking applications for cloud computing and data center deployments. Its core product highlighted in the article is a 40nm 10GBASE-T PHY solution. The company announced demand for that 40nm PHY as the reason for its recent financing. To meet that demand it raised capital in a Series E round. The articles describe Aquantia primarily as a supplier of connectivity and PHY silicon rather than an end-user service provider. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article. Aquantia makes 10GBASE-T PHY chips intended to accelerate Ethernet from 1Gbps to 10Gbps in corporate data centers, with the goal of moving PHY functionality onto server motherboards. The company is ramping a new generation of chips to be built on a 40nm process by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which it says will cut power consumption and cost versus prior generations. Aquantia shipped a 90nm generation in 2008 and plans to ship the 40nm parts in 2010; the 40nm design can create a quad chip with up to 48 ports consuming about 3.5 watts per port. The market for these chips was described as still under a million chips per year, with chips selling for "tens of dollars," while analysts projected a potential of millions of ports by 2012. The company competes with Solarflare, Teranetics, Broadcom and Marvell and aims to leapfrog generations to drive down costs and power. Aquantia has 60 employees and has said the latest round was oversubscribed as it seeks to reach profitability.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2015

Everspin designs, manufactures, and commercially ships discrete and embedded MRAM and ST‑MRAM for applications requiring data persistence, low latency, and security. The company has deployed over 40 million MRAM and ST‑MRAM products across data center, cloud storage, energy, industrial, automotive, and transportation markets. Everspin holds an intellectual property portfolio of more than 500 active patents and applications and has established high‑quality manufacturing worldwide, including a turn‑key 300mm high‑volume foundry partner for advanced nodes. The company is launching discrete memory solutions with new densities and advanced interfaces and claims the world’s first commercialization and volume shipments of ST‑MRAM. Everspin says it is investing heavily in advanced technology, higher densities, volume scalability, and a pervasive ecosystem to further enable ST‑MRAM adoption and continue its history of rapid revenue growth. The company aims to proliferate MRAM and ST‑MRAM as mainstream embedded memories for MCUs, GPUs, DSPs, application processors, and ASICs. Everspin Technologies is the leading developer and manufacturer of magnetic RAM (MRAM), offering stand-alone and embedded Toggle and Spin-Torque MRAM products. The company says it is the world's first volume MRAM supplier and the only company to successfully commercialize MRAM products. Everspin's MRAM is described as the fastest non-volatile memory with virtually unlimited endurance, positioned to complement NAND and DRAM in non-volatile SRAM and DRAM applications. The firm delivers products into data center and storage, energy and infrastructure, and automotive and transportation markets. It has shipped more than 10 million cumulative MRAM products and holds an intellectual property portfolio of more than 600 active patents and applications. The company intends to use new capital to productize and launch its Spin-Torque MRAM technology and accelerate growth in the enterprise storage market.