Corporate Venture Capital for Semiconductor Start-Ups

By Cadence

May 9, 2016

A couple of weeks ago, Silicon Catalyst organized an evening panel about corporate venture capital. Corporate VCs are groups within companies, perhaps Intel Capital is the most well-known, that make investments as opposed to the sort of VCs all along Sand Hill Road, which are known as financial investors. Corporate VCs vary in what their goals are, ranging from simply trying to get a better return on the company's cash, to investing in companies that they might acquire if all goes well, and everything in between.

First a word about Silicon Catalyst. They are an incubator focused entirely on semiconductor startups. They don't make investments in the companies themselves, they provide facilities and negotiate deals on behalf of their entire portfolio for cheap or free design tools, shuttle runs, and so on. They also help their startup companies raise money. Since financial VCs are not interested in semiconductor (they are busy chasing the next Uber for X), this means corporate VCs such as those on the panel at Wilson Sonsini's HQ in Palo Alto that evening.

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