Thank you Justin Kinsey for mentioning Alan Liu and for highlighting the critical work we are doing at Quintessent Inc.: Developing quantum dot lasers and heterogeneous silicon photonics to enable both scalable and reliable optical connectivity for AI data centers.
President at SBT | 19 years of advising leaders in the semiconductor industry and architecting teams from startups to F500 companies
Something unique is happening in the world of AI/ML and quantum: young CEOs aren’t just participating in the revolution—they’re leading it. Our industry rightfully celebrates seasoned executives for their wisdom and resilience, but if we believe that even “old dogs can learn new tricks” in the Age of AI, why not believe the young ones can teach us a thing or two? To me, AI’s future isn’t about age, it’s about ideas and execution. Take William Passo and his team at Rain AI. They’re developing energy-efficient AI chips focusing on digital in-memory compute (DIMC) that has shown major promise for AI applications from training to inference – which is why a half-dozen other AI startups are using a similar approach. With heavy-hitting investor Sam Altman continually pitching Rain to VCs, I’m confident Rain is here to stay, is playing to win, and WILL take market share from Nvidia. Then there’s Gavin Uberti at Etched who is rewriting the playbook for the AI HW market. Etched made a HUGE bet saying ASICs, rather than GPUs, are the key to efficient inference, so they’ve been developing a specialized ASIC called Sohu for that very purpose. While some wrote Gavin and his co-founder Chris Zhu off as “Harvard dropouts” fast forward to today and they’ve landed top technical leaders from Cypress and Apple and have scored a $120M Series A. Try ignoring that. And look at Alan Liu at Quintessent Inc. Copper interconnects are inching ever-closer to obsolescence (credit Mark Wade for that quote) and Quintessent is redefining optical connectivity with a groundbreaking multi-wavelength quantum dot comb laser. They intend to break traditional bottlenecks by slashing power consumption, reducing component count, and multiplying bandwidth density. If they leapfrog and take share from Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, and Celestial, it won’t be by accident. In my two decades in this industry, I’ve lost count of how many leaders have griped about our decades-long talent gap. Yet they’re often the same people scoffing at the young innovators. The truth is, the future may NOT belong to those with the longest resumes, but to those with the courage to challenge “the way it’s always been done.” And forward-thinking VCs are voting with their checks. ??Etched pulled in $120M from Primary Venture Partners and Positive Sum Ventures, with legendary angels like Stanley Druckenmiller and Peter Thiel on board.? ??Rain raised a $25M Series A led by Prosperity 7 Ventures, with Sam Altman eyeing another $140M - $150M in the near future. ? ??Quintessent secured $11.5M in seed funding from M Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Foothill Ventures, and Entrada Ventures. If you're not paying attention to these young leaders, you might want to clean your bifocals –?or you could find yourself playing catch-up. My advice? Lean in, listen up, and get ready to take a page or two from their books. #semiconductorindustry #artificialintelligence #startups