MENLO TIMES

Besxar, the exoindustrial company manufacturing advanced semiconductor materials, led by Ashley Pilipiszyn, has reported the results of Besxar Flight-1 “Mission Asimov.” On July 5, 2026, two Besxar-built “Clipper-class” canisters flew aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 first-stage booster and were recovered intact after the booster returned to land. The mission marked Besxar’s first flight carrying custom wafer cartridges, power, avionics and printed-circuit hardware designed and built

iPronics, a pioneer in silicon photonics-based optical circuit switching for AI infrastructure, led by Christian Dupont, Daniel Pérez-López, and the team, has announced $125 million in Series B funding co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital. NVIDIA joined the round, with participation from new and existing investors including Triatomic Capital, Bosch Ventures, Catalight Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, The Tate Family Trust, Fine Structure Ventures, Ama

Lyte, the physical AI perception company led by Alexander Shpunt, Dr. Arman Hajati, and Dr. Yuval Gerson, has announced a $165 million Series C financing led by Maverick Silicon. The round values Lyte at $1.6 billion post-money. The round included Fidelity Management & Research Company, which led Lyte's Series B, along with Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, Ora Global (formerly Exor Ventures), and additional existing and new investors. Total capital raised since the company'

Architect Labs, an AI research lab for custom silicon, led by Ebrahim Hussain and Aaditya Subedi, has announced that its AI System generated and fully verified end-to-end from a human-written specification, a production-worthy AI accelerator called Redwood. With just two human architects providing the specifications, the AI system designed and fully verified the chip in under two weeks. It also co-designed the firmware and custom kernels and mapped modern AI models to the har

Thunder Compute, building a new way to virtualize GPUs, led by Carl Peterson and Brian Model, has raised a $13 million Series A round led by Matrix Partners, with participation from Y Combinator and CEAS Investments. The capital will be deployed to address the GPU capacity shortage by eliminating the estimated $200 billion in wasted compute currently sitting idle, while building toward a future in which every GPU is virtualized. Enterprises currently underutilize GPUs, with a

Etched, building frontier inference clusters, led by Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen, and Chris Zhu, has shipped its first rack to Jane Street. The company has raised $700M at a $21B valuation, led by Jane Street, joined by Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel, Tiger Global, Bain Capital Ventures, Neo, Stripes, Primary, Positive Sum, Diffusion, Argo, and Blackstone. Less than 1% of the world has access to frontier AI models, creating a need for new

SweGaN, which manufactures high-quality, custom-made epitaxial wafers and materials based on robust GaN technology for manufacturers of leading components and devices for satellite, communications, and defense organizations, led by Jr-Tai Chen, has announced the closing of a USD 14 million Series B round. The round was led by Swedish investor Thisbe AB, Danish venture capital firm North Ventures, and existing shareholders, underscoring continued investor confidence in SweGaN’

Discovered Materials, building AI agents that discover new materials for semiconductor chips, led by Advaith Sridhar and Akash Ramdas, has raised a $9M seed round led by Lightspeed, with participation from Y Combinator and Peak XV, and angels like Paul Graham, Gokul Rajaram and Thariq Shihipar. Intelligence Has a Heat Problem. AI chips face a growing thermal challenge. Modern GPUs can generate heat fluxes of around 140 W/cm², exceeding the heat experienced by a space shuttle

Lumilens, the connectivity platform for AI infrastructure led by Ankur Singla, Ritesh Kapahi, Samuel Liu, Dave Friedman, Ted Schmidt, and the team, has emerged from stealth, having been founded to solve the growing networking bottlenecks limiting AI scale. In just two years after its founding, the company is commercially shipping its first product into production AI data centers under a multi-billion-dollar customer agreement, and announced more than $700 million in new fundi

Rebellions, a global leader in AI inference infrastructure led by Sunghyun Park and the team, has successfully run SK Telecom’s sovereign AI foundation model ‘A.X K1’ (hereinafter K1) on its own server infrastructure and demonstrated an agent service capable of handling concurrent requests from multiple users on top of it. The milestone demonstrates how a domestic large language model paired with a high-performance Korean NPU can power real-world AI services, advancing the c

Eliyan, a leader in foundational connectivity technologies enabling next-generation AI compute, memory, and networking systems, led by Ramin Farjadrad, Patrick Soheili, and Syrus Ziai, has announced it has completed its Series C with a total of $145 million at a $1 billion valuation. The oversubscribed round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from additional new and existing investors, including two new strategic investors: Cisco Investments and Lumentum. As par

Xsight Labs, a fabless semiconductor company providing intelligent connectivity solutions for next-generation hyperscale, edge, and AI data center networks led by Yossi Meyouhas, Gal Malach, and the team, has announced the closing of a $300+ million funding round, establishing a $2.8 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from Aliya Capital Partners, Atreides Management, Artisan Partners, Battery Ventures,

ChipAgents, the category leader in agentic AI platforms for semiconductor design, led by William Wang and the team, has announced an additional $60 million in Series A2 financing, bringing the expanded round to $134 million just six months after its initial Series A close. The financing reflects continued investor confidence in the company’s commercial momentum, with new investor B Capital joining Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, Ericsson, ScOp, and other existing

Etched, building frontier inference clusters, led by Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen, and Chris Zhu, has raised $300M at a $10.3B valuation, led by Sequoia Capital alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Diffusion, Argo, and SK Hynix. The mission is to build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI inference. Frontier models require a new generation of computing systems, from custom chips and advanced packaging to optimized interconnects and cooling, designed end-to-end

Infinity, developing a generative optimization engine that automatically improves computational kernels to accelerate AI training and inference, led by Jeremy Nixon, has raised $15 million in seed funding at a $100 million post-money valuation. The round included significant participation from Touring Capital, along with Principal VC, executives at major chip companies, researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic, and other prominent angel investors. The funding will support the ex

Walden Robotics, a full-stack Physical AI company building and deploying general-purpose robots that put human ingenuity to work at industrial scale, led by Russ Tedrake and the team, has emerged out of stealth with $300 million in funding. The round, which values the company at $1.1 billion, is co-led by Toyota (Toyota Motor Corp, Toyota Invention Partners, and Toyota Ventures) and Deviation Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Prol

BRINC, building technology in the service of public safety, led by Blake Resnick and the team, has announced a $125 million financing round led by Motorola Solutions, with participation from Index Ventures and Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO and founder. The investment brings BRINC’s total funding to more than $250 million, supporting the company’s mission to deploy emergency response drones across 80,000 police and fire stations in the United States. The funding will support BRINC’

Pixel-Flo, reinventing MicroLED production with continuous-Flo™, led by Rick Smith, Suneal Ghataora, Simon Jones, and Sanger Hsu, has raised £5.25 million in seed funding led by Northern Gritstone, with additional investment from SCVC, the Parkwalk Northern Universities Venture Fund, and German investment firm HTGF. Pixel-Flo is developing a scalable manufacturing technology designed to reduce the cost of MicroLED display production. Its proprietary fluidic self-assembly proc

e-peas, powering the future with ambient energy, led by Geoffroy Gosset, Julien De Vos, and the team, has announced the successful closing of USD 22-Million in financing led by Crédit Mutuel Innovation, with the support of its Belgian branch, alongside SFPI, the Belgian federal fund. E‑peas’ growth ambition and long-term vision perfectly align with these two investors' strategic objectives. The capital raise also included the continued support of e‑peas’ historic investors, i

QuantumDiamonds, the world's first commercially available quantum sensing system for semiconductor inspection, led by Dr. Fleming Bruckmaier and Kevin Berghoff, has announced the close of a €91 million funding round to scale production of its quantum-based semiconductor inspection technology. The financing combines an €15 million equity round led by World Fund with €76 million in non-dilutive funding approved at the EU level under the European Chips Act. The non-dilutive fund