EE Times Silicon 60: Startups to Watch

Article By : Peter Clarke, EE Times

EE Times has added 29 startups to our annual list of hot silicon startups; readers may nominate emerging companies for next year.

It has been a year since EE Times produced a version 17.1 of the Silicon 60.

And whereas IoT was flavor of the year in 2016 then in 2017 it is machine learning and open-source hardware. It has also been revealed that venture capitalists have returned to investing in hardware startups — and that tends to mean big money — preparing to ride the next wave of computational architecture and performance.

Many of these startup companies aspire to be the next Intel or ARM — even as Intel and ARM are heading up the food chain towards the subsystem and system.

Meanwhile IoT, drones and autonomous driving continue to catch headlines even while entrepreneurs, global brands and legislators scratch their heads over the best ways to create wealth, well-being and protect consumers from these society-changing developments.

One result is that this year there is an abundance of startup companies coming through to be considered for admission to the Silicon 60.

EE Times has selected 29 startup companies to come on to version 18.0 of its list of 60 firms that we feel are worth keeping an eye on. Some are more mature than others and may be lucky enough to start seeing the market coming towards them.

[What startups did Silicon Catalyst support in its new portfolio.]

EE Times has been publishing and updating the Silicon 60 since April 2004 reflecting corporate, commercial, technology and market conditions. The latest batch of newcomers include companies active in wide band gap materials; analog, mixed-signal, RF and power management circuits and IP; machine learning and RISC-V processors; quantum computing, asynchronous logic and memory; lidar and biometric sensing, wireless power transfer, energy harvesting and ultracapacitors for energy storage.

To make way for the newcomers, 29 companies have dropped off the list. Some of those were acquired, others have simply become mature with the passage of time. Those more mature companies, while no longer listed on the Silicon 60, may yet fulfil an investors’ dream of moving to public ownership or going through a high-priced company sale.

The selection of the 60 companies in Silicon 60 v18.0 is based on the consideration of a mix of criteria including: technology, intended market, financial position and investment profile, maturity and executive leadership. They are emerging companies to follow — for a variety of reasons. The names of the companies brought on to the Silicon 60 at this iteration are highlighted in red in the listing below.

Readers are welcome to nominate their own emerging companies for inclusion in a future iteration of the Silicon 60list. Nominations should be supported by a short citation providing basic details about the company and explaining why the company is suitable for inclusion on the list. Click here to submit your nomination.

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