There are many hardware startups in silicon valley. Tons in VLSI as well. Just google for it. You'll find most are doing various ip blocks on someone else's p

There are many hardware startups in silicon valley. Tons in VLSI as well. Just google for it. You'll find most are doing various ip blocks on someone else's process or finding novel process flows on known equipment. Obviously most are fabless because it's just so much less capital intensive. My company has invested many millions into just the equipment in just my lab and I can only measure stuff someone else made. CAD software is very expensive as well. As for startup specifically related to novel manufacturing techniques. I guess it depends on what a startup is. Is a newly founded company with $50M in funding a startup or just a new company? The bay area has some companies doing interesting things in silicon photonics (in-package optical io is a hot topic as well as quantum computing) And if you're willing to expand the geographic area outside Silicon Valley there is quite a lot more.