financetom
Technology
financetom
/
Technology
/
Ex-Intel CEO Gelsinger joins venture capital firm Playground Global
News World Market Environment Technology Personal Finance Politics Retail Business Economy Cryptocurrency Forex Stocks Market Commodities
Ex-Intel CEO Gelsinger joins venture capital firm Playground Global
Mar 26, 2025 4:24 PM

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel ( INTC ), on Wednesday joined venture capital firm Playground Global as a general partner and also joined the board of a startup working to improve a key chip manufacturing tool.

Founded in 2015, Silicon Valley-based Playground has $1.2 billion in assets under management and specializes in deep technology investments such as semiconductors. It backed AI firm MosaicML, which was sold to Databricks in a mostly stock deal for $1.3 billion last year, as well as quantum computing firm PsiQuantum, which Reuters reported is raising at least $750 million as it races to build quantum computers in Australia and the U.S.

Gelsinger, who left Intel ( INTC ) after disagreements with its board over his turnaround strategy, told Reuters in an interview that he will be involved with 10 to 20 of Playground's portfolio companies and focused on finding technologies that can perform at least 10 times better than the existing state of the art. 

"There are no sustainable protections. You must stay on the front foot of innovation. And Playground gives me the chance to do that and do it at a broader scale," Gelsinger said. 

Gelsinger's first move is to join the board of a Playground portfolio company called xLight as executive chairman. xLight is developing a new kind of laser to produce extreme ultra-violet light that uses far less electricity than the current lasers in lithography machines produced by ASML Holding that are the gold standard in chip manufacturing.

Gelsinger said the technology holds the promise of both boosting the number of chips that factories can make and making those chips smaller and faster - a decades-old trend known as Moore's Law for Intel ( INTC ) co-founder Gordon Moore.

"We'll be able to keep advancing the capacity of Moore's Law into the future," Gelsinger said. "And being able to have that light source being done in America - I think that is huge for us."

Comments
Welcome to financetom comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Related Articles >
Calm trades affected by the markets’ holidays
Calm trades affected by the markets’ holidays
Mar 31, 2024
The tight range dominates the currencies pairs and commodities trades, affected by the financial markets holidays, to keep the scenarios suggested on last Friday valid without any change, and we recommend reviewing them to check the expected trends and targets for the upcoming period. ...
AT&T says leaked data set impacts about 73 million current, former account holders
AT&T says leaked data set impacts about 73 million current, former account holders
Mar 30, 2024
March 30 (Reuters) - Telecom company AT&T ( T ) said on Saturday that a data set released on the dark web about two weeks ago has impacted approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders, based on the company's preliminary analysis of the incident. ...
South Korea March exports up for sixth month on chip sales; miss estimates
South Korea March exports up for sixth month on chip sales; miss estimates
Mar 31, 2024
SEOUL (Reuters) - Robust demand for South Korean chips helped Asia's fourth-largest economy post export growth for a sixth consecutive month in March, albeit at a pace slightly slower than expected, data showed on Monday. Exports rose 3.1% from the same period a year prior to $56.56 billion, missing a gain of 5.2% tipped in a Reuters poll of economists....
U.S. updates export curbs on AI chips and tools to China
U.S. updates export curbs on AI chips and tools to China
Mar 29, 2024
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Reuters) - The Biden administration on Friday revised rules aimed at making it harder for China to access U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chips and chipmaking tools, part of an effort to hobble Beijing's chipmaking industry over national security concerns. The rules, released in October, seek to halt shipments to China of more advanced AI chips designed by...
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.financetom.com All Rights Reserved