In April, TVLP supported the Hard Tech Venture Summit of IEEE that gathered at SRI International in Menlo Park — a venue that holds nine IEEE Milestones, more than any other organization in the world — the vibrant investors and startups community. A post-event report.
Investors, founders, and robotics pioneers gathered at SRI International to bet on the future of semiconductors, AI chips, and autonomous systems — against a backdrop of geopolitical tremors shaking the global chip market.
The backdrop could hardly have been more charged. In the weeks leading up to the IEEE Hard Tech Venture Summit, the U.S.–Iran conflict had wiped $200 billion off the valuations of Samsung and SK Hynix. A threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz was putting a quarter of the world’s helium supply — a critical input for semiconductor fabrication — at risk. The $975 billion global chip market was swinging on geopolitical news in real time.
Into this landscape, roughly seventy investors and founders convened on April 16 and 17 at SRI International in Menlo Park — the same campus where the mouse, Arpanet, and the technology that became Siri were invented — for two days of startup pitches, expert keynotes, and hands-on workshops.
“We are witnessing a Hard Tech renaissance driven by AI, robotics, and climate challenges,” said Bruno Iafelice, Event Chair and Silicon Valley Lead. “The investors attending understand that hardware requires patience, technical depth, and specialized capital — and they’re actively seeking the next generation of physical innovation.”
Today, SRI’s labs host research into telemanipulation platforms for remote surgery, digital night vision systems, and DARPA-funded photonic circuits for detecting laser threats. It is, in other words, an active participant in precisely the sectors the summit was designed to accelerate.
“This summit is part of IEEE’s strategic initiative to provide concrete support for science-based entrepreneurs,” said Joanne Wong, Chair of the IEEE Hard Tech Venture Summit series. “We’re not just facilitating pitches — we’re building an ecosystem where IEEE’s technical expertise meets venture capital to accelerate real solutions to global problems.”
Bilal Zuberi (Red Glass Ventures), who trained under Nobel laureate Mario Molina at MIT, spoke about deploying capital in AI applied to the physical world: manufacturing, energy, transportation, sensors. His experience across Lux Capital and General Catalyst has shaped a thesis that hardware is not a niche — it is the substrate on which software’s promises are built.
The afternoon featured structured pitch sessions and curated roundtables matching founders with investors by sector and stage. The investor committee included:
Daniel Theobald, chairman of Vecna Robotics and holder of 97 patents, drew on two decades of building autonomous systems for DARPA, NASA, and the Department of Defense to address the moment most hardware startups fail: not the invention, but the scaling. His talk dissected the gap between a working prototype and a deployable product — a gap that has claimed companies with genuine technological breakthroughs.
Troy Helming brought the perspective of a serial founder who has successfully navigated that gap four times over. As founder of TradeWind Energy — the number-one U.S. wind developer in 2017 — and the architect of $35 billion in renewable energy projects, he has achieved four billion-dollar exits, all in the energy sector. His session focused on the strategic and operational decisions that separate a fundable company from a funded one.
The Engineering Design to Manufacturing Workshop rounded out the day with hands-on sessions led by mentors from Google, Intel, Meta, and NASA, covering vendor selection, production scaling, and compliance — the unglamorous infrastructure of getting hardware to market.
For venture investors, this context sharpens both the opportunity and the mandate. Software needs something to run on. As AI moves from cloud to edge, as autonomous systems demand zero-latency processing, and as nations race to secure domestic chip capacity, hardware has become the strategic moat that software never was.
Paolo Tomassone
Investors, founders, and robotics pioneers gathered at SRI International to bet on the future of semiconductors, AI chips, and autonomous systems — against a backdrop of geopolitical tremors shaking the global chip market.
The backdrop could hardly have been more charged. In the weeks leading up to the IEEE Hard Tech Venture Summit, the U.S.–Iran conflict had wiped $200 billion off the valuations of Samsung and SK Hynix. A threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz was putting a quarter of the world’s helium supply — a critical input for semiconductor fabrication — at risk. The $975 billion global chip market was swinging on geopolitical news in real time.
Into this landscape, roughly seventy investors and founders convened on April 16 and 17 at SRI International in Menlo Park — the same campus where the mouse, Arpanet, and the technology that became Siri were invented — for two days of startup pitches, expert keynotes, and hands-on workshops.
“We are witnessing a Hard Tech renaissance driven by AI, robotics, and climate challenges,” said Bruno Iafelice, Event Chair and Silicon Valley Lead. “The investors attending understand that hardware requires patience, technical depth, and specialized capital — and they’re actively seeking the next generation of physical innovation.”
A Venue With Nine IEEE Milestones
The choice of SRI International was far from incidental. Founded in 1946 as Stanford Research Institute and independent since 1970, SRI has spent eight decades turning laboratory breakthroughs into commercial products: the ERMA automated banking system, telerobotic surgery, the first computer mouse prototype, Arpanet itself. In 2023, it absorbed PARC — the Xerox center that gave the world the graphical user interface, Ethernet, and the laser printer. Nine of its technologies have received IEEE Milestone recognition.Today, SRI’s labs host research into telemanipulation platforms for remote surgery, digital night vision systems, and DARPA-funded photonic circuits for detecting laser threats. It is, in other words, an active participant in precisely the sectors the summit was designed to accelerate.
“This summit is part of IEEE’s strategic initiative to provide concrete support for science-based entrepreneurs,” said Joanne Wong, Chair of the IEEE Hard Tech Venture Summit series. “We’re not just facilitating pitches — we’re building an ecosystem where IEEE’s technical expertise meets venture capital to accelerate real solutions to global problems.”
Day One: The Capital Side of Hardware
Thursday opened with remarks from Don Tan, IEEE Vice President and member of the National Academy of Engineering, and Peter Marcotullio, SRI’s Senior Vice President. Then the floor passed to the investors.Bilal Zuberi (Red Glass Ventures), who trained under Nobel laureate Mario Molina at MIT, spoke about deploying capital in AI applied to the physical world: manufacturing, energy, transportation, sensors. His experience across Lux Capital and General Catalyst has shaped a thesis that hardware is not a niche — it is the substrate on which software’s promises are built.
The afternoon featured structured pitch sessions and curated roundtables matching founders with investors by sector and stage. The investor committee included:
- Columbia Technology Ventures
- Departure Capital
- Ecosystem Ventures
- i3 Ventures
- Intel Capital
- Monozukuri Ventures
- REDDS Capital
- TandemLaunch
- TSV Capital
- TSVC
Day Two: The Builder’s Perspective
Friday shifted from capital allocation to engineering reality. The day was anchored by two keynotes from founders who have operated at the frontier between prototype and product.Daniel Theobald, chairman of Vecna Robotics and holder of 97 patents, drew on two decades of building autonomous systems for DARPA, NASA, and the Department of Defense to address the moment most hardware startups fail: not the invention, but the scaling. His talk dissected the gap between a working prototype and a deployable product — a gap that has claimed companies with genuine technological breakthroughs.
Troy Helming brought the perspective of a serial founder who has successfully navigated that gap four times over. As founder of TradeWind Energy — the number-one U.S. wind developer in 2017 — and the architect of $35 billion in renewable energy projects, he has achieved four billion-dollar exits, all in the energy sector. His session focused on the strategic and operational decisions that separate a fundable company from a funded one.
The Engineering Design to Manufacturing Workshop rounded out the day with hands-on sessions led by mentors from Google, Intel, Meta, and NASA, covering vendor selection, production scaling, and compliance — the unglamorous infrastructure of getting hardware to market.
The Market These Investors Are Navigating
The summit took place against a semiconductor market undergoing structural transformation. With the industry approaching $1 trillion in annual revenue, AI chips now account for roughly half of all sector revenue — while representing less than 0.2% of units sold. The concentration of value in a tiny fraction of output has made the competitive dynamics of advanced chip development more intense, and more geopolitically fraught, than at any point in the industry’s history.For venture investors, this context sharpens both the opportunity and the mandate. Software needs something to run on. As AI moves from cloud to edge, as autonomous systems demand zero-latency processing, and as nations race to secure domestic chip capacity, hardware has become the strategic moat that software never was.
About the Summit
The IEEE Hard Tech Venture Summit is organized by the Industry Committee of the IEEE Systems Council and by IEEE Entrepreneurship. TVLP Institute offered local cummoprt to the initiative, helping to bring together the hard tech community.Paolo Tomassone
