Greg Arnold

When most people hear "solid-state," they think storage. But in Santa Clara, xMEMS Labs just gave that term new resonance, literally. The company just raised $21M in Series D funding led by Boardman Bay Capital Management, with Cloudview Capital, CDIB-TEN Capital, Harbinger Ventures, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, and other strategic investors tuning in. This isn't another round of capital, it's an #amplifier for a company turning silicon into a new language of #sound and #cooling for the AI era. Founded in 2018 by Joseph Jiang and Jemm Liang, xMEMS spun out of piezoelectric R&D at TSMC and turned what was once wafer-level theory into commercial hardware. Joseph Jiang, a veteran of Knowles, Fortemedia, and InvenSense, leads with precision and swagger, while Jemm Liang, who built Ultrachip from the ground up, drives the engineering with surgical focus. Co-Founder & CLO Wei-Fu Hsu, the former MediaTek exec and IP expert, ensures xMEMS' innovation is as protected as it is disruptive. Their play? A monolithic MEMS platform that transforms voltage into vibration, silicon into sound. Unlike legacy coil speakers and fans, xMEMS tech doesn't move parts, it moves markets. Over 500K MEMS speakers shipped in 1H'24, backed by >250 global patents. The Cypress & Sycamore lines redefine what "small" can do: 1mm-thin, full-range, and capable of sub-bass response once thought impossible in earbuds. Their XMC-2400 µCooling chip, 1mm-thin, fan-on-a-chip, inaudible, moves 39cc/sec of air at just 30mW. That's not cooling, that's choreography at a molecular level. Dr. Chester Hwang, named CTO on Oct 15, 2025, joins to push that curve further. Alongside veterans Mike Housholder (VP Marketing & Biz Dev), Jim Wargnier (VP N.A. & EU Sales), James Lee (VP & Korea GM), Steven P. Bentley (VP Sales), and Martin Lim (VP MEMS Tech), xMEMS is scaling at semiconductor speed. They're already in BleeqUp's AI sports glasses and teamed with Dongguan Rayking Electronics for TWS modules. When OEMs talk "next-gen," they're talking xMEMS-level integration. For investors like Boardman Bay's Will Graves, this isn't just sound engineering, it's signal intelligence. With AI pushing devices thinner, faster, and hotter, xMEMS' piezoMEMS platform sits at the intersection of #acoustics and #thermals, where every millimeter matters. Backing them is a bet that the next wave of #sensorytech won't just compute, it'll feel alive. So what's next? Scaling production, expanding capacity, and embedding xMEMS' silicon pulse into everything from earbuds to AI #datacenters. In a world chasing speed, silence, and fidelity, xMEMS isn't following the beat, they're building the frequency the future will hum to. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #SeriesD #AI #Sound #SoundEngineering #Semiconductors #Data #DataDriven #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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scoop:⚡ Nvidia is inviting startups to a private Power Summit next week at its Santa Clara HQ—to talk about the need to get more power to data centers for artificial intelligence. More here: https://lnkd.in/eSNEqapw

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Big M&A news in Seattle startup land as Palo Alto Networks plans to acquire 3-year-old cybersecurity company Protect AI, ranked No. 10 on the GeekWire 200, our list of top tech startups across the Pacific Northwest. It's part of a growing cohort of cybersecurity startups that are based in the Seattle region or have a significant presence in the area. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gfx_pXkS

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In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, UCLA scientists have shown it’s possible to reprogram a patient’s blood-forming stem cells to generate a continuous supply of functional T cells, the immune system’s most powerful cancer-killing agents. https://lnkd.in/eDwzaY3n

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TBPN (the new hot tech news show hosted by the "technology brothers") claims that startups in San Francisco now have employees working a 9-9-6 schedule (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) "proven" by analyzing Ramp corporate credit card data. Here’s the tweet: https://lnkd.in/eYq_P2n7 As everyone applauds this new "locked in" culture, can I just call BS for a minute? First of all, how is corporate credit card data the thing to analyze here? If you want to know if people are working, check Slack messages or Github commits, or heck, even child care usage. But corporate credit card data from Ramp? Employees don't literally spend money as they work. But sketchy data aside, the bigger issue is that glorifying 9-9-6 culture ignores what actually makes companies succeed. Companies don’t win because their employees are chained to their desks for 72 hours a week, ignoring their families and their health. They win because talented people bring energy, creativity, and focus to the work. These things require rest and health. Look, I’m all for working hard, but forcing employees to work super long hours just serves to alienate entire groups of people like parents from being able to work at your startup and it burns out the ones who can. That’s bad business and it won’t help you succeed. So, I guess I'm saying, beware of corporate sponsorships disguised as news pushing a narrative that won't serve your company or employees.

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When you mentor founders, you are not just helping build companies. You are influencing the kind of leaders the next decade will produce. Over the years, I have worked with student founders across fourteen universities, from Southern California to India. The ideas were different. The environments were different. The challenges were different. Yet one pattern showed up again and again. Most early founders do not lack funding advice. They lack founder formation. Enduring companies are not built by decks, frameworks, or spreadsheets alone. They are built by people with the ability to think clearly under pressure, question assumptions, and stay anchored to their values when shortcuts are tempting. Curiosity is not just interest. It is the discipline to ask better questions, even when the answers are uncomfortable. Resilience is not optimism. It is the willingness to rebuild when the first plan fails, because it almost always does. Ethics is not a talking point. It is the quiet structure that holds trust together long after momentum fades. I have watched twenty-one-year-old founders stay up late not to refine a pitch, but to make their product more honest. Those moments matter. They show what mentorship truly shapes. Not direction, but judgment. Not outcomes, but decision-making. We often talk about building the next generation of startups. What we need just as urgently is the next generation of founders. Leaders who are thoughtful, steady in their purpose, and disciplined enough to outlast noise, hype, and trends. That is the real multiplier in any ecosystem. What qualities do you believe will define strong leadership in the decade ahead? #mentorship #students #founders

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Honored to have been invited to fal and Henry Shi’s Lean AI Leaderboard Celebration Dinner, celebrating some of the leanest and fastest-growing startups in SF. Here are some of the most overwhelming trends that were discussed among high-growth companies working with small, high-output teams: 1/ Headcount is no longer used as a success metric. As Henry Ward said, “Hiring means we failed to execute and need help.” Headcount is not a flex measure anymore. People aren’t asking “How big is your team?” anymore. They’re asking “How many customers do you have?” 2/ They're finding ways to leverage AI across every function. Every engineer uses Cursor or Windsurf. Every GTM leader is in Clay. The most efficient teams are built AI-first across the board. Thank you to Henry Shi, Burkay Gur, and Gorkem Yurtseven for putting this all together!

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Cerebras is bringing its AI supercomputers to the UAE’s Stargate project ◾ Deploying megawatt-scale AI infrastructure across the Gulf, India & Pakistan ◾ Partnering with Abu Dhabi’s G42 ... part of the U.S.-UAE Stargate deal ◾ Competing head-on with Nvidia in AI compute ◾ Planning 12–15 data centers within 8 months ◾ IPO refiling “soon,” says CEO Andrew Feldman The UAE is quietly building the world’s largest AI hub outside the U.S.

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