- Lightfinder won the 2026 Lam Capital Venture Competition with a chip-scale metrology technology that can enable real-time process control and eliminate hours-long external measurements
- The competition reinforces Lam’s leadership in building the AI backbone of semiconductor manufacturing by investing in and elevating breakthrough startups
- Finalists showcased rapid innovation across AI, advanced interconnects, and next-gen cooling technologies
Driving the news: Lightfinder, a U.S. company led by founder and CEO Diana Mojahed, won the 2026 Lam Capital Venture Competition on May 21 in Fremont, California, emerging from a field of 10 finalists from around the world.
- The event brought together startups, investors, and technology leaders focused on one central challenge: building the AI backbone for the future of semiconductor manufacturing.
Why it matters: An important event highlighting Lam’s industry leadership, the biennial competition (held every two years) has become a high-visibility platform for early-stage companies developing breakthrough technologies for the semiconductor ecosystem.
- For finalists, the competition is a chance to gain exposure, connect with strategic and financial investors, and validate ideas in front of some of the industry’s most influential decision-makers.
- Besides leaders from Lam Research and Lam Capital, representatives from AMD, Micron, NVIDIA, TSMC North America, Intel Capital, Microsoft M12, Hitachi Ventures, Samsung Ventures, SK Hynix America, Tyche Partners, Maverick Silicon, and BlackRock also attended as speakers and judges.
Kevin Chen, managing director of corporate development and Lam Capital (left) moderates an Investor Panel discussion on separating signal from noise in AI investments. Left to right: Shahin Farshchi, Lux Capital; Gayahtri Radhakrishnan, Hitachi Ventures; Michael Stewart, Microsoft M12; Siddharth Gupta, Samsung Ventures; Tony Kim, BlackRock.
Attendees hear each finalist give their pitch and answer judges’ questions during the Lam Capital Venture Competition.
Winner spotlight: Lightfinder won with a compact sensing platform designed to bring metrology inside the tool. The 18-month-old MIT spinout based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is developing a chip-scale optical depth-sensing instrument that could help fabs move closer to real-time, automated closed-loop process control by reducing the need for manual, time-consuming measurements.
What it is: A fully chip-scale sensing solution for semiconductor equipment, built to fit inside a vacuum chamber.
Why it stands out: It could eliminate the need to stop a process, break vacuum, pull the wafer, and wait two to 24 hours for external metrology results.
Potential impact: Faster feedback, fewer manual steps, parallelized sensing within the tool, and a scalable platform that could extend to other markets.
What they’re saying: “Being in front of a multi-trillion-dollar market cap audience gave us exposure we simply wouldn’t get otherwise—and seven minutes of their attention to tell our story is incredibly powerful,” said Lightfinder CEO Mojahed. “This win is really a testament to our team, and we’re excited to scale Lightfinder and bring our innovation to reality.”
Runner-up: nsc of Singapore earned runner-up recognition for an optical interconnect technology that uses light to move data between chips more efficiently than conventional electrical wiring.
- CEO Andrew Kim said the approach addresses a major bottleneck in AI and HPC by enabling higher bandwidth, lower power use, reduced heat, and better scaling for AI systems.
Lam Capital Venture Competition by the numbers:
- 10 finalists from South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, India, the EU, and the United States, spanning innovations from power efficiency to glass TSV etch to physical AI
- Biennial competition, now in its fourth cohort over seven years
Neeraj Bagi, CEO of Meukron Technologies, at the event poster session explains his company’s technologies to etch material from glass to create through-glass vias (TGVs), interposers, high-density interconnects, and microfluidic structures without hydrofluoric acid or lasers.
This year’s competition also featured a fireside chat between Lam President and CEO Tim Archer and Creative Strategies CEO and Principal Analyst Ben Bajarin. Tim highlighted why the chip industry must increase the velocity at which it innovates, scales, and collaborates as well as the leadership role Lam is taking in this effort.
What we’re hearing: “The Lam Capital Venture Competition provides a unique platform to accelerate disruptive start-ups and their contributions to the semiconductor ecosystem,” said Kevin Chen, managing director of Lam Capital and Corporate Development at Lam Research. “Congratulations to Lightfinder and all the innovative finalists of the 2026 Lam Capital Venture Competition.”
2026 Finalists
Winner: Lightfinder (Mass., U.S.): Chip-scale optical spectrometers.
Runner-up: nsc (Singapore): Heterogeneous integration of III-Vs to CMOS for photonic devices.
Other Finalists
- Amazing Cool Technology (Taiwan): Graphene-infused copper composite material to enable high-performance semiconductor systems.
- Flexify.ai (San Francisco Bay Area, U.S.): Industrial AI agents for equipment design and procurement.
- Fringe Metrology (Ariz., U.S.): Structured light-based surface metrology for wafer shape and surface characterization.
- Meukron Technologies (India): Provider of electrochemical etch fabrication technology for through-glass via formation.
- SemiAI (Korea): Virtual metrology software for semi manufacturing.
- TDS Innovation, Inc. (Korea): Lateral growth process and tools for 2D materials deposition in semiconductor manufacturing.
- Trener Robotics (San Jose, U.S.): Formerly T-ROBOTICS, a physical AI company delivering skills models for rapid robot training and deployment.
- Vertical Compute (Belgium): 3D magnetic vertical integrated memory.