Dave Welch is the founder and CEO of AttoTude, a Menlo Park deep-tech startup building the world's first terahertz interconnect that runs over wire instead of fiber or photonics, aimed at unclogging the data-movement bottleneck inside AI and hyperscale data centers. A co-founder of Infinera, where he pioneered large-scale photonic integrated circuits, and former CTO at SDL, Welch holds more than 200 patents, has authored roughly 300 publications, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In April 2025 AttoTude raised a $50M Series B, pushing total funding past $90M.
Teradar is a Boston deep-tech company building the first commercial sensor that sees using the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum - the slice between microwave and infrared. Its solid-state Modular Terahertz Engine combines radar's ability to punch through rain, fog and snow with resolution approaching that of lidar, claiming up to 20x the detail of today's automotive radar with no moving parts. Founded in 2020 and out of stealth in November 2025 with a $150M Series B, Teradar is working with eight global automakers and Tier-1 suppliers and aims to put its sensor in a production vehicle by 2028.
Barmak Heshmat is an optical physicist and entrepreneur who founded Brelyon, a San Mateo-based startup creating Ultra Reality displays that generate immersive panoramic virtual screens without any headset. A former MIT Media Lab research scientist and onetime head of optics at Meta's AR division, Heshmat ranked in the top 1% of Iran's national university entrance exam, earned a PhD in optoelectronics from the University of Victoria, filed 8 patents, published 20 journal papers, and now leads a company backed by Lockheed Martin Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, and Corning after raising $18.8M total - solving the fundamental problem of why no one wants to wear a computer on their face.