Highlights this week: 🛫 planes and transistors, 👨🎨 poet turned mathematician, 🎛 and analog for ai.
🔗 Last week’s most-clicked link: How not to f**k up your manufacturing startup.
Startup News 🚀💰:
- Celsus, a Munich-based startup using AI to supercharge and automate circuit-board design, raised a €25 million Series A led by Earlybird Venture Capital, along with DI Capital and existing investors Speedinvest and Plug and Play.
- Peer, a blockchain-based social network startup, raised $14M for their masterplan including metaverse hardware.
- Glowforge, a laser-cutting hardware startup, raised a $43M Series E led by DFJ Growth.
- Scale Computing, a startup helping enterprises with edge computing via storage architecture and disaster recovery technologies, raised $55M in new funding led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
Interesting Links 🔗:
- The start-up transistor works once! Great breakdown of a tricky design process an engineer had in the 1990’s that’s still plenty relevant to hardware designs today.
- Troubleshooting Analog Circuits. Absolute classic book to add to the collection. Written by legendary analog circuit designer, Bob Pease.
- Fast Airplanes and Tiny Transistors. The evolution of commercial airplane manufacturing shares intriguing parallels to that of semiconductor manufacturing. This three part essay will articulate some of the relevant lessons from the aviation industry. Speed/density, capital intensity, unit economics, and east/west cultural divide.
- GlobalFoundries abandoned its quest for a 7nm process node back in 2018, when it realized it could still meet the needs of 70% of its total available market without building more cleanrooms or buying more EUV machines. Interesting review of their product mix and growth strategy.
- Incredible story of a high-school-dropout-turned-poet who became a fields-medal-winning mathematician. The article dives into some of the theorems he solved and the overall lifestyle of a brilliant mathematician, something not so public today. When he first moved to Ann Arbor, he found himself unequipped for the brutal winter. He had few belongings, and he needed a blanket. But when he looked up how to get to the local mall, he found it too logistically difficult. “It was just beyond my level of tolerance,” he said. “I did not want to waste my mental energy on figuring out how to go from here to there.” Instead, he walked to a nearby CVS drugstore, bought 10 squares of fabric and a giant stapler, and stapled the squares together to make a blanket.
- AI built on analog electronics. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a design framework to build next-generation analog computing chipsets that could be faster and require less power than the digital chips found in most electronic devices, especially in applications that don’t require precise calculations.
- Tesla is now the second-biggest producer of electric vehicles after Chinese rival BYD surged past Elon Musk's company to take the top spot. BYD, which is partly owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, also counts as the world's second-biggest producer of EV batteries, having overtaken LG.
- Great podcast of an interesting conversation with Steve McGeary of Samtec. Steve has a strong technical background in RF/MW connectors, and the podcast focuses on technology drivers that have caused the lines between HS Digital and RF/MW to blur.
- Interesting chart following ~500 recently laid-off Tesla employees to their next roles. Top three employers are Rivian (56), Apple (51), and Amazon (51).
- It’s the best and worst of times for semiconductor supply chains. Semi supplies are rising, but demand is easing. Plenty of chips for smartphones and laptops, but not for cars. Semi stocks have fallen amid recession fears.
One Interesting Picture 📸: 🪔
