fpga
(11)
Visibl Semiconductors
Visibl Semiconductors (YC W26) is a San Francisco startup building an AI-native coordination layer for chip design. Its software watches specifications, RTL code, CI pipelines and EDA tool outputs for 'drift' - the slow divergence between what a chip was supposed to do and what the design actually does - then opens evidence-backed cases and proposes review-ready fixes that a human must approve before anything ships. Founded by Bryce Neil (CEO) and Jordon Kashanchi (CTO), the company targets verification and methodology owners on teams heading toward integration, design freeze and tapeout, where a single missed misalignment can trigger a $5M-$20M respin.
Zero-Error Systems (ZES) Pte Ltd
Zero-Error Systems (ZES) is a Singapore deeptech semiconductor company and Nanyang Technological University spin-off that builds radiation-hardened integrated circuits, radiation-tolerant system-on-modules, and irradiation testing services. Its patented radiation-hardened-by-design technology protects low-cost commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics from radiation effects such as single-event latchup, letting satellite and space-system makers achieve space-grade power reliability and data integrity at a fraction of traditional rad-hard cost.
DualBird
DualBird is a Boston-based data infrastructure company building a cloud-native engine that brings hardware-grade acceleration to big data and AI workloads. By running rewritable FPGA silicon on AWS as a software service, DualBird plugs into existing Apache Spark and Apache Iceberg pipelines and claims 10-100x faster processing at 50-90% lower cost, without asking teams to change their code or workflows. The company raised $25M in combined Seed and Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in November 2025.
Gilad Tal
Gilad Tal is co-founder and CEO of DualBird, a Boston-based deep tech startup rebuilding the foundation of analytics and AI data infrastructure by running silicon acceleration as cloud-native software. A Technion-trained electrical engineer and physicist with 14 years in ASIC and software development, he previously founded and led TerrainEDA, an EDA startup acquired by Synopsys. At DualBird he and his co-founders use rewritable FPGA hardware to plug into Apache Spark and Iceberg environments, claiming up to 100x faster performance and up to 90% lower cost with no changes to existing workflows.
Grovf
Grovf is a deep-tech semiconductor startup building AI infrastructure backend networking - RDMA and chiplet IP, soft IP cores, and scale-out NICs that connect AI accelerator servers at 400/800Gbps with sub-2-microsecond latency. Founded in 2017 in Armenia by Artavazd Khachatryan and Khachik Sahakyan, the company began with FPGA-accelerated databases for the Industrial IoT and evolved into networking fabric for large-scale AI model training. Grovf was the first company from Armenia and the Caucasus to win an EU Horizon 2020 SME Instrument grant, and went through UC Berkeley's SkyDeck accelerator.
Khachik Sahakyan
Khachik Sahakyan is the co-founder and CEO of Grovf, a deep-tech hardware company building AI back-end fabric IP, chiplets and 400/800 Gbps SmartNICs that move data between AI accelerators with sub-2 microsecond RDMA latency. A microwave engineer and former Yerevan State University lecturer turned founder, he splits Grovf between Newark, California and Yerevan, Armenia, and has spent the last several years convincing data-center buyers that the path to scale is in silicon, not software.
Debbie Marr
Dr. Debbie Marr is the co-founder, CEO and President of AheadComputing, a Beaverton, Oregon startup building high-performance 64-bit RISC-V CPU cores. A former Intel Fellow and Chief Architect of Intel's Advanced Architecture Development Group, she spent 33 years shaping processors from the i386 era to modern Core and Xeon chips, served as server architect of the Pentium Pro, turned Hyper-Threading from concept into shipping product on the Pentium 4, and was chief architect of the 4th Gen Core (Haswell). She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, more than 40 patents and 30+ published papers, and in 2024 left Intel with three fellow architects to prove that open architectures can deliver top-tier performance because, in her words, everybody deserves better compute.
Artis
Artis, LLC (Advanced Real-Time Information Systems) is a Herndon, Virginia defense and technology developer that builds systems for problems measured in microseconds. Founded in 1999 by Keith Brendley, the company is best known for active protection systems for military vehicles - Iron Curtain and its third-generation successor, Sentinel - that detect and defeat incoming rockets, missiles and drone-borne threats in fractions of a second. Beyond defense, Artis applies its high-speed sensing and parallel-processing work to highway worker safety, 3D imaging and pedestrian monitoring.
Positron AI
Positron AI designs purpose-built inference hardware for transformer models, aiming to make Nvidia GPUs optional for running large language models at production scale. Its first product, Atlas, ships from US fabs and claims roughly 3x lower latency and 4x better performance-per-watt versus an H100 system.
Frank Ferrante
Frank Ferrante is the CEO of ForwardEdge ASIC, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary dedicated to advancing U.S. domestic semiconductor chip design. A 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, Ferrante has held leadership roles at Intel (Senior Director of Military, Aerospace and Government), Wolfspeed (VP of Worldwide Automotive Sales and Marketing), and Altera. He is a vocal advocate for U.S. advanced manufacturing policy, having advised policymakers on the CHIPS Act, SHIP, and RAMP-C initiatives. Under his leadership, ForwardEdge ASIC achieved U.S. Government Trusted IC Vendor Status in February 2026 and selected the MIPS S8200 for mission-critical autonomous platform ASICs.
Peter Morales
Peter Morales is the CEO and co-founder of Code Metal, a Boston-based AI company that hit unicorn status in February 2026 after raising a $125M Series B led by Salesforce Ventures. With a background spanning BAE Systems (F-35 ML optimization), MIT Lincoln Laboratory (counter-drone AI), and Microsoft (HoloLens computer vision), Morales built Code Metal to solve a gap he discovered firsthand: AI can generate code fast, but mission-critical industries — defense, automotive, semiconductors — need proof that code is correct before it ships. Code Metal's verifiable AI platform translates high-level code into hardware-optimized, mathematically verified production code for edge devices, drones, FPGAs, and autonomous systems. Customers include the U.S. Air Force, L3Harris, Raytheon, Toshiba, and Bosch.