Signs of Spring in Silicon Valley

News cov­er­age in the Sil­i­con Val­ley val­i­dates the obser­va­tion that we humans are hard-wired to give pref­er­ence to neg­a­tive infor­ma­tion over the pos­i­tive. That said, I see some real signs of recov­ery in our region – recov­ery based on real inno­va­tion and new tech­nolo­gies that promise to change our world. Three exam­ples of these pos­i­tive trends:

• Ear­ly-stage semiconductor com­pa­nies are being fund­ed to explore new ways of cre­at­ing proces­sors, micro­proces­sors and even sen­sor sys­tems. Open approach­es such as RISC‑V show great promise for redefin­ing what had been a con­sol­i­dat­ed market.
• Open RAN com­pa­nies are being formed and rich­ly fund­ed to rein­vent the way that wire­less sys­tems oper­ate. Their approach­es focus on the devel­op­ing 5G and even 6G stan­dards. Open RAN promis­es a move away from pro­pri­etary base sta­tions and equip­ment, mak­ing wire­less far more afford­able and worthwhile.
• GEN3 com­pa­nies in the Green Space promise great improve­ments in the way we man­age our resources. These run the gamut from hard­ware prod­ucts to soft­ware sys­tems and SaaS plat­forms. Ven­ture back­ers are pour­ing bil­lions into promis­ing start-ups in waste man­age­ment, envi­ron­men­tal con­trols and resource con­ser­va­tion efforts.

The pain from large tech lay­offs dom­i­nates the news. But if you lis­ten, you can hear the sto­ries of growth and inno­va­tion too.