Amidst what seems to be a boom of chips in Central Texas, I want to share with everyone, everywhere, how the hard tech of Texas isn’t a result of a recent pivot, there is a history to study in how it grew up around Austin, a history from which we can learn how to build better innovation ecosystems, drawing from the Austin hard tech ecosystem.
If you want to understand how an ecosystem matures, study it through a sector you don’t already romanticize. So, I’m going to do the obnoxious thing and write about semiconductors, quantum computing, and robotics precisely because it’s not my beat, rather, because, ecosystem development, public policy, and the governments work in innovation and entrepreneurship not being my specialty, my ignorance of the sector makes it the perfect context in which to explain my world to yours (what we do can be applied in any sector). When you strip away founder folklore and your own biases, you can see the machinery of an economy (or startup for that matter) for what it is: institutions, incentives, and culture grinding forward. Texans, if that offends anyone still pitching “Silicon Hills” like it’s a bumper sticker, good – we need to rebrand for the future.
To do this meaningfully, of course research is involved, but also tapping expertise. I asked futurist David Smith and semiconductor sherpa Horacio Gasquet to weigh in.
Let’s put Austin’s history in the right frame. Long before today’s chip fabs and humanoid robots, Austin’s tech DNA was forged by defense electronics and corporate R&D. Tracor (founded in 1955) built sophisticated military systems, grew to thousands of employees, then disappeared into the acquisition maw of the late-90s defense rollups – useful money and skills, yes, but ultimately value that left town. IBM planted a flag in 1967 and inaugurated the North Austin campus era (which I dug into almost 10 years ago) that would attract generations of engineers and managers. National Instruments (now NI) arrived in 1976 with test-and-measurement gear, the quiet backbone of every hard-tech lab, and turned Austin into a place where hardware got debugged, not just demoed. This foundation has contributed significantly to the Austin hard tech ecosystem.
The 1980s were catalytic and oddly collectivist. In 1983, MCC chose Austin for a national research consortium designed to counter Japan’s juggernaut; it was a bet on universities, talent, and collaboration more than on any single firm. Austin Software Council was formed around this time and it was becoming clearer that lacking software marketing and sales talent was hindering the ecosystem (and does everywhere still today). SEMATECH followed in 1988 as a public-private consortium to shore up U.S. chip manufacturing headquartered in Austin before it later drifted to New York; SEMI/Sematech was an important but often overlooked part, making up a large amount of the domestic suppliers to the US semiconductor industry. If you want the cultural read: Austin grew up on consortia, labs, and industrial policy, not on blitz-scaled consumer apps. That’s why our “bootstrap” ethos feels different from the Valley’s market-share mania, a contrast I’ve unpacked before in “How the ‘Bootstrap Culture’ of a Place like Austin Changes Entrepreneurship.”
David Smith, CTO at iByond and CEO Strategic Pathways, “The Austin culture during that time reflected Texas, ‘lets work with each other to a greater outcome, with the growth of west and east coast leaders the culture change to, lets protect us, our IP, and not share or collaborate’”
Here’s a reality the practitioners keep repeating out loud… As an American Physical Society (APS) panel convened in Austin framed it, “Deep-Tech typically cannot share a fab with Samsung, Nvidia, AMD, Apple, etc. because of technical contamination/supply chain risks (usually materials).” This is why academic cleanrooms and fit-for-purpose foundry capacity (increasingly too today, Venture Studios perhaps), matter as the region scales quantum, photonics, and biotech devices. Hard tech shares the same principles of startups and entrepreneurship as the world in which I’m more familiar, but innovation is dependent on physical infrastructure that is both collaborative and independent; supportive of distinct entities while sharing resources.
The 1990s anchored Texas’ hardware base here. Samsung’s Austin fab spun up in the late 90s and has grown ever since; today the company is also building the mammoth Taylor, TX complex with major CHIPS support, an extraordinary public endorsement of Central Texas as a semiconductor hub. The ex-Motorola Austin operations became Freescale and ultimately NXP, which still runs major fabs here; even surviving and learning from the 2021 winter storm power debacle. Meanwhile, AMD, ARM, Applied Materials, and Tokyo Electron grew large design and manufacturing support footprints in Greater Austin; Tokyo Electron even set U.S. headquarters here years ago, a reminder that supply-chain gravity matters as much as headlines.
Here’s a short-form institutional history that locals know but outsiders miss, from the APS panel’s “History of Clean Room Fabs in Central Texas” which Horacio hosted:
- Motorola ->Freescale -> NXP
- AMD -> Spansion -> Cypress -> Infineon -> “SkyWater Technologies”
- SEMATECH lineage from ATDF -> SVTC -> Novati -> Skorpios -> UT Austin’s Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE)
That snapshot of lineage reflects why we have the people, equipment, and process memory to do real device work here, and why replacing lost shared-R&D infrastructure has been urgent. And don’t overlook, Texas Instruments and MCC were substantial in the region during this time, with a TI manufacturing plant in San Marcos, home to IBM’s Selectric typewriter, and the special chips and components for early devices such as the TI calculators we all know so well.
Three academic cleanrooms now carry much of the region’s R&D load, UT Austin Microelectronics Research Center, Texas A&M’s AggieFab, and Texas State’s Nanofabrication Research Service Center, and this needs to expand into private sector resources.
Article Highlights
Why Didn’t Central Texas Boom from the 90s into Deeper Tech?
It did, it just took time, and understanding that and how, is why we’re here. Silicon Valley started sucking up national attention. Honestly, Austin didn’t “lose” companies as much as it specialized. Tivoli (founded in Austin) was acquired by IBM in 1996; the people and paychecks remained, but the brand and governance shifted. MCC withered as federal focus moved on and companies were spun out. SEMATECH migrated. In spite of that, this era birthed Dell, a hardware company that taught a generation here how to operationalize supply chains at scale, and left behind an engineering workforce steeped in verification, manufacturing, and systems integration. The culture skewed toward practical build-it-and-ship-it competence more than venture-driven hypergrowth.
And that, my friends, is why the culture of the region is so different in as much as appealing to venture capital. If you want to dig into what I mean by that, since it does affect your part of the world, read “Why Venture Capital Avoids Your Startup Ecosystem.” In this context, it’s not that innovation isn’t just as capable in an ecosystem like Texas, it’s that the ecosystem has experience and a culture that favors practical build-it-and-ship-it – evident in advice typical of the region, “focus on customers,” a sentiment distinctly different from disruptive entrepreneurship.
From the 2000s to now, the flywheels multiplied. Apple committed to a multibillion-dollar Austin campus expansion, Tesla moved its HQ and megafactory to the metro, Oracle shifted its HQ to Austin in 2020, and Samsung’s Taylor bet vaulted the region into the first rank of U.S. advanced manufacturing. The University of Texas doubled down institutionally, building what matters in deep tech: fabs, talent pipelines, and defense-aligned research. UT’s Texas Institute for Electronics (TIE) is the megaproject, the Legislature’s $552 million enabled DARPA’s $840 million award to stand up the nation’s first 3DHI manufacturing center, a five-year, $1.4 billion partnership that moves Austin from “design town” to “build town.”
SkyWater completed the acquisition of Infineon’s Austin Fab 25 in June, converting captive capacity into open-access U.S. foundry infrastructure and locking in a multiyear supply agreement that expands domestic, trusted manufacturing for automotive, industrial, and defense applications.
Austin and Hard Tech Today
If quantum felt like sci-fi in 2015, it now feels like Austin. With those foundations, the Texas Quantum Initiative formalized a statewide strategy in 2025 to position Texas as a leader in quantum research, manufacturing, and workforce. On the ground, Austin’s Strangeworks has been commercializing quantum software since 2018; the company raised $4 million in seed capital and a $24 million Series A led by Hitachi Ventures with IBM and Raytheon; exactly the kind of dual-use capital stack that signals a region’s depth. TACC is integrating quantum compute access with the state’s HPC (high-performance computing) muscle, giving researchers and startups a serious playground.
Robotics is where Austin’s hard tech culture gets loud. Apptronik, a UT spin-out, is building the humanoid robot Apollo and closed a $350 million Series A this year. The company aims to deploy into warehouses and factories and already has commercial ties with Mercedes-Benz and GXO. Diligent Robotics raised growth rounds to scale its hospital robot Moxi. ICON, yes, 3D-printed homes count as robotics as much as do autonomous vehicles, closed successive rounds with strategic homebuilder participation and is translating R&D to neighborhoods at scale.
If you’re mapping capital, differentiate three flows
First, corporate investment: Apple’s campus, Tesla’s and Samsung’s factories, NXP’s fabs, these aren’t “relocations” so much as production bets that anchor supply chains.
Second, public-private programs: CHIPS grants for fabrication, DARPA’s 3DHI hub money to TIE, NSF and EDA tech-hub activity across Texas; critical for semiconductors and quantum because capex is measured in commas.
Third, venture: the local set: LiveOak, Silverton, ATX Venture Partners, Elsewhere, S3, Next Coast, now complemented by 8VC and other national players who planted in Austin during the 2020–2022 migration. If you want the cultural context for why that influx doesn’t automatically translate into “more checks,” appreciate that the foundations laid in the 70s and 80s, shifted through the 90s and 00s, and rebuilt in the 10s, paint the picture of a city being architected to serve capital investment – most of you, cities, aren’t doing this well and venture capital isn’t showing up because of it. During the early days there were almost no VCs in the region, with the Texas Capital Network, among a few others, available as a group pooling funds, in what we might call a syndicate today, to fund innovation.
Now, let’s put Austin under a consistent lens using the Six Considerations of the Economic Development of Startups because it isn’t perfect (it’s never perfect) and if we’re going to do better by innovation, we have to be discerning of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, rather than allocating grants to startup hubs and hoping for the best.
• A culture of competition, potential, and creativity
Wins: UT research culture, Army Futures Command urgency, legacy of shipping hardware; the “prove it” attitude suits semis and robots.
Gaps: we still tell our story like a music festival; the narrative needs to be specific and credible to hard tech buyers and investors. Think of it like a contamination warning at the pointy end of the credibility spear: you either position AND build the right fabs and protocols, or you don’t scale device companies. UT still needs to address technology transfer for its labs and programs.
• Reasonable wealth available
Wins: corporate capex and federal grants substitute for missing mega-funds; family offices are learning deep tech theses (thesises?).
Gaps: true A–C stage capital remains thin locally relative to the ambitions of TIE and Samsung-Taylor, Austin imports syndicates for the biggest checks.
• Innovative employers
Wins: Samsung, NXP, Apple silicon teams, ARM, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron; Apptronik, Diligent, ICON as anchors; defense-aligned primes circling UT.
Gaps: too few Austin-born hard and deep tech midcaps; we jump from startup to FAANG-scale, leaving a missing middle of $500M hard tech employers that stabilize careers.
• Little-to-no counterproductive government interference
Wins: Texas, helpfully, intervened where markets underprice strategic manufacturing. The Legislature’s $552 million unlocked DARPA’s $840 million and a $1.4 billion 3DHI (3D Heterogeneous Integration – I’m learning here too) hub at TIE.
Gaps: permitting, land-use, and power reliability must catch up with fab-class industry; the 2021 weather freeze was a warning shot; in short, regional politics can get in the way.
• Access to startup-experienced people
Wins: decades of Dell/NI/IBM alumni who know operations; Valley transplants who know capital; UT, A&M, and Texas State cleanrooms now backfilling SEMATECH’s exit with real device-fabrication experience.
Gaps: too many “innovation” roles staffed by folks who’ve never shipped hard tech, which is why many founders still fly to the Bay and Boston for specific expertise.
• Credible, distinct promotion of the region
Wins: Austin can own “where deep tech gets built at scale,” from 3DHI to humanoids to 3D-printed homes, if we stop copycat branding. Such as, maybe, “Austin Is Where Tech Comes to Life.”
Gaps: media narratives still swing between hype and eulogy; we need outcome-driven storytelling that investors can underwrite. Hopefully, I seriously pissed off the Wall Street Journal for their horrific journalism about Austin, “How Media Distorts the Truth About Regional Ecosystems” (evidence of my point that leading your narrative is critical).
Intentional Development in Hard Tech
If you’re still throwing money at accelerators, you’re playing last decade’s game. In this sector, where capex, validation cadence, and B2B enterprise sales cycles define survival, the leverage comes from venture studios, corporate ventures, and labs, the infrastructure that manufactures startups as a process, not a pageant. I’ve laid out the case in “Stop Funding Accelerators. Invest in Venture Studios Instead” and “Building a Tough Tech Venture Studio.” The broader data is increasingly consistent: studio-born companies reach key milestones faster and more often than traditional venture-formed peers, which is exactly what regulated, capital-intensive, or hardware-heavy companies need.
Applied to Central Texas, the opportunities are obvious. Studios anchored by UT labs and TIE cleanrooms, if the technology transfer issues can be solved, can spin out process-validated companies with early customers inside Samsung/NXP supply chains. Corporate venture programs, from Dell to Samsung to defense, primes partnering with universities and can seed pilots and anchor first revenue. City and state funds should underwrite venture studios and testbeds, not another “innovation center” with free Wi-Fi and a ribbon.
“While the growth of the semiconductor and defense electronics were major drivers in the early days, other drivers in the past include the growth of the software industry, Game studios and gaming companies (Massive multiplayer) and the emergence of Austin and Texas-based foundations that funded physical and human capital infrastructure, key drivers,” added David
The implication for Austin and Texas is not subtle: lock in a generational manufacturing and advanced-R&D advantage by aligning institutions around how hard tech firms are actually built in an information age era. That means continuing the CHIPS-era public investment in fabs and workforce, expanding consortia like TIE and the Texas Quantum Initiative, and consolidating our startup support into studios and corporate–academic pilot programs that translate research into purchase orders. Or… keep mistaking coworking square footage for economic development and watch the exits (literal company exits) happen somewhere else.
Two quotes to sit with as you decide which Austin you’re building. UT on TIE: “The $840 million award… is a substantial return on the Texas Legislature’s $552 million investment in TIE.” And Reuters on Apptronik’s raise: the funding “aims to deploy Apollo in warehouses and manufacturing plants for supply chain-related tasks.” One is public money buying the future; the other is private money hiring it.
If you care about outcomes in your city, not theater, start here: pick one of the Six Considerations where you actually have leverage: capital formation, employer engagement, workforce, or credible narrative, and move it in service of chips, quantum, and robotics. Then tell me which piece of that stack you’re willing to own: a studio, a testbed, a corporate venture lane, or a workforce wedge. If you want or need examples, push back on research and evidence about ecosystems, or argue with history, go ahead and keep going as you are with your version of the 6 considerations but then answer this: which part of a hard tech buildout will you be accountable for? Why isn’t it happening the way you hope? There is a lot to learn in Austin’s history, pivots, and resurgence.
Playbook Rule #1 – If you’re copying someone else’s playbook, you’re going it all wrong
Mark Simchock without question. Playbooks are artifacts of a specific stack; copying the tactics without the stack is cargo-culting.
The job is to translate principles to your own assets (employers, wealth channels, lab capacity, and culture) which is why I push this lens so hard.
In Austin’s hard tech, that means studios and testbeds over demo days, supply-chain partners over pitch theater, and purchase orders over press. If we were to codify Rule #2, is it “Design to your constraints, not your aspirations”?
Theatre is wonderful, except we’re a long way from a Tony, and appear to be doing a murder mystery dinner.
Elizabeth Horne well shoot, now I’m going to have to write that angle
Paul O’Brien Give ’em a little bit of the razzle dazzle! We all know the status quo, and who’s faking, but we could enjoy life.
“Stop copying Silicon Valley startup ecosystem storytelling; own a distinct, credible narrative that investors and employers can underwrite.”
Hear hear!
Paul O’Brien It’s like Gutenberg and the printing press, isn’t it? That world-shattering invention was a function of time and place. He had access to certain things in Germany that were not as available elsewhere. Along the same lines, he probably wouldn’t have invented anything related to the growing coffee beans, because they don’t grow coffee beans in Germany.
What always kills me is so often the talk is about innovation and disruption, etc and then the discussion ends w/ “… and we’ll be the next tech Silicon Valley…” Which – to your point – completely misses the point 🙁
Great post!
Hardtech like Bob Metcalfe’s brilliant invention of Ethernet is absolutely essential foundational economic stuff but then you also need entrepreneurs inventing new applications of existing tech atop it – like the iPhone. Not sure such a device is hard tech but an amalgamation of existing (hard) tech for an entirely new value proposition. “Light” tech maybe? Or still fair to call it “hard” tech? I don’t know.
Maybe it’s similar to how the old USSR prioritized heavy industry, but what really drives an economy are lighter industries (but heavy industry still plays a role – just not as big as their central planners assumed).
Mark Biw good questions. Worth digging in more as I love to do. Which is to say, when we think we have an answer, ask why that’s the case.
I push startups and cities in the same way…
“We need to get VC.”
Okay… Why?
And why isn’t it showing up?
And why is that?
Much of what I get into now is about 3 layers deeper than what gets talked about most. Doesn’t mean it’s the answer, but it’s certainly something to consider and address more than where most attention lies now.
If you don’t learn from history, you’re doomed to repeat it. Austin’s hard-tech story is messy and doesn’t look like Silicon Valley – for good reason. Thrilled to see Paul O’Brien unpack it with Horacio Gasquet’s semiconductor depth.
Love this and thank you for sharing it Jeff
History is a spec sheet, not a slogan. Austin scaled on consortia, fabs, and defense workflows, not demo days, which is why our flywheel looks different from the Valley. Horacio Gasquet brought the semiconductor arc into focus for me; and to channel David’s constraints-first mantra, the work here is simple: design to what we can actually build (workforce, cleanrooms, corporate pilots) then let venture follow.
If you’re in economic development or corporate strategy, pick your lever for Q4: a fab-adjacent testbed, a venture-studio seat, or a pilot budget with a hard-tech startup. Which one are you willing to own?
For folks new to this lens, here’s the framework driving how Cities should be helping startups: https://seobrien.com/the-6-consideration-of-the-economic-development-of-startup
The framing makes economic sense once you know the history, Paul, yes. Arthur Jackson, MBA (Cedar Park’s chief economic development officer) gave a recent talk at a Plug and Play Tech Center semiconductor + AI startup event that unpacked (with receipts!) how the ‘mythic’ Silicon Valley origin story actually traces back through Austin’s own tech roots. For many in the crowd, it was the first time hearing it. Adds a whole new layer.
Paul O’Brien The truth is out there!! Could collaborate on forming a theory / hypothesis here, if you’d like. I do think it’s all pretty interesting – what delineates between “hard” tech, software, and perhaps “light” tech? And how are each – is important to economic development, and how they depend upon each other (can’t have cloud software without data-centers or without ethernet, for example).
If we don’t know our history how can we have a successful future. Great read!
Thank you Arthur Appreciate sharing it. This kind of research isn’t hard to do, and you’re right, know what we’re working with if we hope to plan for the future.
I had a friend repeat a recent Republican talk radio quote, “If the private sector isn’t willing to fund it, is it worth funding?” This greatly misses the fact that the government has traditionally been the way in which new ideas are de-risked. When I was doing fusion research, when it was not cool, there were NO fusion companies. Now there are more than I can count, they are well funded, and exist BECAUSE government de-risked the technology over the past 80 years! So, if the current political climate is to pull out of de-risking technology then the result will be the hollowing out of the hard tech pipeline for investment.
Horacio, I’m with you. Markets fund scale, not (as much) discovery, and pretending otherwise is how you starve the future. As Mariana Mazzucato puts it, “What if, from Silicon Valley to medical breakthroughs, the public sector has been the boldest and most valuable risk-taker of all?” From the book, The Entrepreneurial State.
If you like the internet, you like targeted de-risking: DARPA’s ARPANET program is the root of what we all ship on today. In fusion specifically, DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences is explicit about its role as “the largest federal government supporter” tackling the remaining scientific obstacles, and DOE is now bridging fundamental work to the growing U.S. fusion industry through its 2024 strategy.
ARPA-E hands the baton to private capital; its portfolio has generated more than $11B in follow-on funding once the science is de-risked.
That is the pipeline I see in Austin’s hard tech lane: government de-risks – I just want to fix how they’ve been pissing money away at Accelerators when they could be funding infrastructure, programs, labs, incubators, and venture studios, with corporate partners validating with pilots. Without the ecosystem at large, you get a hollow funnel and performative “innovation.”
If you are in policy, corporate strategy, or venture, pick a lever for Q4 and say it out loud here: fund the de-risking, stand up a first-customer pilot, or underwrite the scale-up.
NXP has mostly shut down the cleanroom that was the Oak Hill fab, or earlier known as MOS11. That was the very first 200mm wafer production plant IN THE WORLD I learned recently in a fab obituary someone wrote to memorialize it. I saw it when the magnetically levitated lot transfer system was still operational. What will happen with that space and those tools? NXP may not use it, but Skywater has shown there is another business model for these old fabs.
It has been announced that NXP is shutting down the fab at Manor and 183 in two years (ATMC MOS13). Are we, Austinites, going to let that facility close? It’s a fully functional manufacturing site capable of feature sizes down to 90nm!!! NXP may not need it, but just about everyone else doing deep-tech in Texas certainly does.
This is where the birth story of Skywater Technologies is interesting. Private Equity funded the creation of Skywater Technologies from NOTHING, which then purchased a Cypress Semiconductor fab in Bloomington Minnesota, and negotiated supply agreements to support Cypress and ensure revenue as it grew into a new business model as a start-up green space and trusted foundry for DOD projects.
We could do that again with MOS13. Who’s up for a big lift?
Horacio Gasquet I’m not a chip engineer, I listen to the operators. If what we’re saying is true (that a lot of critical parts still run on mature lines) then letting NXP’s Manor/183 site wind down is a policy choice, not “the market.” Yeah?
My questions, for everyone, would be:
Operators – Is there a viable conversion path for the Manor/183 site similar to what SkyWater executed, and what would the rough requirements look like (condition, timeline, cost class)?
Customers – Who are the 1–2 anchor buyers that would sign volume and make a transition it make sense for power, industrial, automotive, medical, defense?
Capital and state – What mix of private equity plus state and federal tools would be realistic here, and who needs to be at the table first?
If those answers line up… People I’d value in the thread and in the room: Thomas Sonderman (SkyWater), Dwayne LaBrake (Texas Institute for Electronics), Sanjay Banerjee and Deji Akinwande (Texas ECE), Robert Quinn, leadership from Samsung Semiconductor and NXP Semiconductors.
Paul O’Brien to say it differently, markets, and private equity, exist to make money. They don’t make a product, don’t have a customer, don’t have a vision, it’s all about conversion rate. Companies need to pick a product space, invest in it, develop the customers’ vision and roadmap to find alignment, and execute. All of this has to happen while keeping the financials strong, at least for a publicly traded company. The market doesn’t decide if my customers still need a 180nm aluminum-based technology while servers and vector graphics chips are driving 5nm to <3nm.
There still is a fair amount of demand in the older technology realm, but likely a glut of capacity. It’s not a growth space, it’s commodity. Growth in the US semiconductor space won’t come from mopping up the old fabs and products. Companies need a reason to invest in that growth in the US. If we think that’s government’s job, what are the forces here that require government intervention to encourage growth?
Paul Ingersoll You’re right: markets and PE optimize returns, and mature tech looks like a commodity when there’s slack. Government shouldn’t fund inventions; it should fund the plumbing markets underinvest in because the payoff is shared and slow. It also reduces harms beyond crime; monopolization and exclusion are harms, too. The public role is to keep the field open so more firms can participate.
Practically: commons, not handouts. Power and water where industry needs it; predictable permitting to cut cycle time; neutral places to test without buying a factory; public procurement for first orders; apprenticeships that lower hiring risk. None of that picks winners; it lowers barriers, so private capital follows.
The question is how to keep capacity and know-how available while we push what’s next, so the market isn’t gated by a few firms that can carry fixed costs. If Gov funded two moves in the next 18 months, which changes your calculus: faster permits/utilities, a neutral try-and-prove site tied to workforce, or coordinated demand in government buying?
Good thoughts. IMO Capital is THE MOST CRITICAL component.
Mick Simonelli sure, but what justifies the capital? We’re finding in most of the world, capital isn’t showing up not because there isn’t an opportunity there, but because the circumstances (economy, regulation, awareness, jobs) are such that it can’t be justified.
Paul O’Brien I would argue the reason capital has little velocity (besides whatever the latest FOMO tech of the day is) is due to the lack of innovation in how we fund early stage innovation. The venture industry has NOT scaled along side the expansion of innovation ecosystems.
Mark Simchock we see the copy playbook behavior commonly in the venture studio space. It is a simple answer to solve for the complexity of building you own plus you can claim some of the track record of the playbook. Except that playbooks are unique to the thesis, team, ecosystem, and capabilities. Failure to adapt is failure delayed with a near certainty. Such an easy mistake to make too.
Matthew Burris Amen. This is another case where attempting to mitigate risk actually increases risk.
This is a fantastic and much-needed take on building a credible tech ecosystem. The point that Austin’s hard tech DNA was forged over decades of intentional, unglamorous choices is spot on. It’s a powerful lesson that infrastructure and aligned incentives matter more than superficial branding.
Invesho can be useful here by helping founders in these intentionally-built ecosystems connect with the right investors, ensuring their years of hard work and grit get the capital they deserve.
What people need to understand is that deep-tech and hard-tech rely on infrastructure. You need some expensive equipment to build it.
Others might view it like a maker space, or a bio lab. But, what about space craft, quantum computers, and photonic integrated circuits. How are you going to build something big, or tiny and cheap that requires large expensive machinery?
Sematech was such a green space for any startup (with funding) to prototype, improve and de-risk their technology. I can rattle off almost a dozen really cool and disruptive technologies that were developed here in Austin. It and the private entities that all existed in that space at Montopolis and Oltorf on UT Austin leased property are now gone.
With that a certain critical mass of infrastructure was also lost.
UT Austin has taken that facility back and is now using government funding to put in new tooling for a new purpose called the Texas Institute for Electronics. The purpose is different, the tooling is different, and the mandate is different. Right now, it has one mission. Only time will tell if it will restore that ecosystem to some extent.
Skywater purchase of Fab 25 may fill that role, but will they extend that business model from MN to ATX???