4 ms·

Investors hate hardware development, there's no appetite for risk.

• crotchfire 3y ago
  Investors hate hardware because they've been crowded out by the fabs. Fabs no longer think of design creators as their customers. They think of design creators as their portfolio companies. The fab invests in them: not cash, but rather production capacity. Unless you are Apple/Nvidia/Broadcom/Qualcomm-sized, the fabs do not consider you to be a customer. They will pressure you, hard, to take on a "design partner" like Broadcom, and to become that company's customer. The fabs are not particularly interested in having you pay them. At best they might be interested in having you pay the bigger fish (GUC, Synopsys, etc) who are the fab's true customers. Having the fabs behave like equity investors has, unfortunately, crowded out all of the real equity investors.