Akash Systems is a San Francisco deep-tech company building chips and systems cooled by lab-grown diamond. Its patented GaN-on-Diamond technology pulls heat away from transistors at the nanometer scale, powering everything from CubeSat radios that beam data at 5 Gbps to AI servers that run cooler at higher density. Backed by Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund and the U.S. CHIPS Act, the company is building a 40,000 sq ft diamond-semiconductor fab in West Oakland.
Chris Biddy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Astro Digital, a California-founded aerospace company that has delivered 35+ satellites and operates 10+ missions in orbit. A mechanical engineer by training (M.S., Cal Poly San Luis Obispo), Biddy steered Astro Digital from an Earth observation startup into a full Mission-as-a-Service platform - cutting the cost, schedule risk, and complexity barrier for organizations wanting to put hardware in space. He previously led engineering at Canopus Systems, and has been active in the commercial smallsat movement since its early commercial days.