At Playground Global in Palo Alto, a tightly curated StrictlyVC gathering will unpack where deep tech is going next — from the bottlenecks stymieing advanced chips to neural interfaces blurring the lines between biology and computing. This lineup is not just about platitudes, but the people building, operating, and investing in such breakthroughs who will explain what’s real, what’s hype, and where the next compounding gains will be.
Semiconductor Bottlenecks and the EUV Race
Particle accelerator physicist Nicholas Kelez, a Department of Energy alumnus, will describe a homegrown assault on one of technology’s most significant choke points: extreme ultraviolet lithography. The most advanced chips of today rely on machines that cost close to $400 million and that use EUV light sources dominated by a single Dutch supplier, ASML. The physics that underlies the technology emerged in American labs in the 1990s, supported by organizations like DARPA and the D.O.E.; the commercial value of those experiments ended up as a package being built elsewhere. Kelez’s method harnesses accelerator-based light sources to bypass the heritage limitations and return next-gen lithography back to U.S. soil.
Why this matters is straightforward: if supply of EUV tools lags, so do AI, 5G, and every single class of high-performance computing. The high-NA EUV tools from ASML are coming with eye-popping complexity and expense; the $52.7 billion CHIPS and Science Act push is throttling up local fabs, but they can’t print one more machine of this type from centrally downloaded manufacturing plans. Look forward to talk of photomask pellicles, resist chemistries, and source power — the unglamorous subproblems that will determine whether the U.S. can credibly diversify a single-point-of-failure supply chain.
Neural Interfaces Head Out of Labs and Into Clinics
Scientist Corp. co-founder Max Hodak promises to do more than simply repeat the company line on brain-computer interfaces. The work by his team on retinal prosthetics has built upon a decade of research that has given at least dozens of patients crude vision, through trials conducted by such programs as Second Sight and Pixium Vision. The next chapter, as Hodak puts it, is “biohybrid” interfaces — hardware that connects with layers of neural tissue (instead of just resting on top of them) to allow paralyzed people to command computers and assistive devices through thought.
The path is no cakewalk. Signal stability over the long term, glial scarring, and power delivery are tough engineering problems to solve as companies like Synchron and Neuralink announce early human-implant milestones under FDA pathways such as Breakthrough Device designation. Look for details about bits-per-second throughput targets, durability data, and timelines to reach the jump from demonstrators to reimbursable therapies — the breakthrough that actually changes patients’ lives.
Whisper Tech and the Post-Screen Interface
Demonstrators Mina Fahmi and her co-founder, Kirak Hong, who came out of Meta’s neural interfaces effort, will demonstrate why the next interface we use might be worn rather than held.
Their start-up, Sandbar, has developed the Sound Ring, which records whispers or subvocalized words and converts these into text — a subtle, always-accessible input that seeks to extend cognition without needing your eyes or hands. It’s the same wild frontier pursued by electromyography-based wearables and bone-conduction microphones, with threads of research connecting us all through academic labs and industry programs like Meta’s acquisition of CTRL‑Labs.
Hardware operator and investor Toni Schneider (now at True Ventures) backs the team; that firm has a history with consumer hardware bets like Ring, Fitbit, or Peloton. The potential is enormous: IDC has said that more than 500 million wearables ship each year in recent years, but the vast majority are passive sensors. A trustworthy — and private! — silent speech interface could flip that mix from data collectors to compute companions for real. Privacy and consent will be key differentiators, and this crowd of entrepreneurs knows that devices situated so near the body (and brain) will likely attract attention from regulators.
Investors Reconsider Where the Next 10x Comes From
From the capital side, Goodwater Capital’s Chi‑Hua Chien and Scribble Ventures’ Elizabeth Weil will question the consensus that enterprise AI is where all the action is. Both bet big on category-defining companies well before they were household names, and both believe that fundamentals in semiconductors, robotics, space, and neurotech are creating asymmetric opportunities the market is mispricing.
Recent data backs the pivot. PitchBook and CB Insights have both reported that even as venture funding overall cools, deep tech categories attached to strategic infrastructure — the likes of chips, defense, and industrial automation — are growing share and tapping nontraditional capital from corporates and government programs. Translation: the cost of capital is aligning with teams that are shipping atoms and electrons, not just tokens and model weights.
From the Stage: Specifics Over Startup Platitudes
Listen for specifics, not platitudes:
- Ask for testable power targets at x nm from gate sources for next-gen lithography.
- Durability and signal quality numbers for BCIs.
- Latency and word-error rates for silent-speech wearables.
- Financing capex-heavy roadmaps that won’t keep you from winning without being fast followers.
Palo Alto has had its share of hype cycles. Unique to this conversation is that it’s based on physics, manufacturing, and clinical realities — the mess that distinguishes world-changing technology from clever demos.