Dai Weili's chip landscape

As a co-founder of Marvell, Weili Dai witnessed and participated in the entire process of the company's growth from a startup to a semiconductor giant with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. Notably, she didn't stop there. In recent years, she has transformed into a key promoter in the semiconductor investment field in Silicon Valley, playing an important role in the growth of a series of startups.

From a technical engineer to a co-founder of an enterprise, from a business leader to an angel investor, every transformation of Weili Dai has kept pace with the rhythm of the industry's development. How did she build her business empire in the highly competitive semiconductor industry? Let's take a look at her story.

The Entrepreneurial Legend of a Husband - Wife Team

Weili Dai was born in Shanghai, China. She showed a talent for science since childhood. In middle school, she immigrated to the United States with her family, settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, and finally entered the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) to study computer science.

It was also at Berkeley that she met her life - changing partner, Sehat Sutardja. At that time, Weili Dai was pursuing a bachelor's degree in computer science, while Sehat Sutardja was a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical Engineering. They met in the academic hall, not only finding love but more importantly, discovering that they shared the same passion and perseverance for technological innovation.

Sehat Sutardja is a technical genius, focusing on chip design and algorithm optimization; Weili Dai is better at transforming complex technologies into market - acceptable products. This complementary personality and skills laid a perfect foundation for their future entrepreneurship.

After graduation, they didn't start a business immediately. Weili Dai joined Canon Research Center America, engaged in software development and project management. This experience allowed her to deeply understand the entire process from technology R & D to product implementation and also made her realize the huge gap between technology and the market.

Meanwhile, Sehat Sutardja was also accumulating his technical strength in academia and industry. The couple worked hard in their respective fields, but they always had a common dream in mind: to create technologies that could truly change the world.

In 1995, at the node when the network and PC industries were about to take off, Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja co - founded Marvell Technology Group. The company's name comes from the English word "Marvel", symbolizing their determination to create technological miracles.

Initially, Marvell was a fabless chip design company, focusing on the design and development of storage device controllers and network communication chips, with a starting capital of only $1 million. The early days of entrepreneurship were not easy. The couple took on multiple roles. Sehat Sutardja was responsible for technology R & D, while Weili Dai took on the heavy responsibilities of product planning, market development, and company management.

Their core technical advantage was to provide high - speed data interface controllers for hard - disk manufacturers, a kind of chip that could significantly improve the storage read - write speed without sacrificing stability and compatibility. At that time, such products were still blank in the market, and Marvell quickly found an entry point and established cooperation with giants such as Western Digital and Seagate.

Marvell's chips quickly rose in the semiconductor industry with their excellent performance and reliability. By 1999, Marvell's annual revenue had exceeded $100 million. In 2000, Marvell was successfully listed on the NASDAQ with the stock code "MRVL", and its market value soared rapidly. Since then, the company continued to expand with the strong demand in the global storage, router, switch, and WiFi module fields.

In 2002, Marvell launched its first - generation Ethernet control chip, quickly defeating competitors such as Broadcom and Realtek.

In 2004, Marvell entered the Wi - Fi market and began to compete head - on with Qualcomm and Intel.

In 2006, Marvell acquired Intel's XScale mobile processor business for $600 million and entered the smartphone chip field.

After 2008, the company gradually entered the set - top box, printer, and tablet computer markets, diversifying its business.

At its peak, Marvell's market value once exceeded $20 billion, with thousands of employees globally, becoming one of the top ten fabless chip design companies in the United States. Weili Dai was also included in the Forbes "World's Most Powerful Women" list multiple times, becoming one of the few female entrepreneurs with actual operational rights in the global IC design field.

However, as the company's scale expanded, some problems began to emerge in Marvell's governance model. Since the company's senior management was almost completely controlled by the founding family, the outside world gradually questioned its internal control, financial transparency, and governance mechanism.

In September 2015, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation into Marvell, accusing it of prematurely recognizing revenues and manipulating profits to meet expectations in multiple fiscal quarters. Meanwhile, an anonymous whistle - blower letter also emerged within the company, claiming that the board of directors had omissions and lacked sufficient supervision over the accounting department.

This incident quickly evolved into an "executive earthquake": in April 2016, founder Sehat Sutardja was asked by the board of directors to resign as CEO. A few months later, Weili Dai was also asked to resign as president and leave the board of directors.

For the outside world, this storm meant that the chip - founding couple officially bid farewell to the empire they had built; for Weili Dai personally, leaving Marvell didn't stop her. Instead, it became the second leap in her career.

From an Entrepreneur to an Investor

After leaving Marvell, Weili Dai set her sights on a broader technology ecosystem and began to support and nurture the next generation of technology innovators as an investor and entrepreneurship mentor. Weili Dai's investment philosophy continues her successful experience at Marvell: always focus on companies with disruptive technological potential that can solve real - market needs.

In 2017, Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja co - founded FLC Technology Group, with its headquarters in Las Vegas. "FLC" stands for Founders, Leaders, Creators. The goal of FLC is to build an innovation - acceleration platform that integrates technology and business, focusing on fields such as AI, semiconductors, advanced packaging, and edge computing, and providing systematic support for entrepreneurs worldwide, including technology incubation, strategic guidance, channel expansion, and investment connection.

Different from traditional venture capital institutions, FLC is more like a comprehensive entrepreneurship service platform. It not only provides financial support but more importantly, offers all - round support from technology to the market for entrepreneurs.

In 2019, in the face of the increasing trend of AI chips, Weili Dai took action again and founded DreamBig Semiconductor, focusing on the next - generation computing architecture and chiplet technology. This company focuses on developing cutting - edge chiplet platforms to promote the next wave of affordable, scalable, and modular semiconductor solutions for the AI era and future development.

It is reported that DreamBig launched an open - chip platform called "MARS" (Modular Advanced Reconfigurable System), which is a world - leading platform capable of providing a new generation of semiconductor solutions using open - standard chiplets for the mass market. The MARS platform features modularity, high combinability, and high energy efficiency, providing a flexible hardware foundation for AI startups and system integrators.

The MARS Chiplet platform solves two major technical challenges faced by AI server and accelerator hardware developers - computing scale expansion and network scale expansion. The Chiplet Hub of this platform is the most advanced 3D memory - first architecture in the industry, capable of direct memory access.

In July 2024, DreamBig completed a $75 million Series B financing, co - led by the Samsung Catalyst Fund and the Sehat Sutardja family fund, bringing the company's total financing to over $93 million. The investors in this round also include new investors such as Hanwha, Event Horizon, and Raptor, as well as existing investors such as UMC Capital, BRV, Ignite Innovation Fund, and Grandfull Fund.

Against the backdrop of the gradual stagnation of Moore's Law and Chiplet being regarded as the "new Moore's Law" for continued performance growth, DreamBig's technical route is particularly important. The company is one of the most - watched companies in the Chiplet architecture field, and the openness and modularity of its MARS platform provide new development ideas for the entire industry.

Against the backdrop of the gradual stagnation of Moore's Law and Chiplet being regarded as the "new Moore's Law" for continued performance growth, the importance of packaging technology has become increasingly prominent. In 2021, Weili Dai founded Silicon Box in Singapore, focusing on advanced 2.5D/3D packaging processes, filling the gap in the Asia - Pacific market for small - batch, rapid - iteration packaging.

Silicon Box specializes in low - cost, high - density, energy - efficient packaging solutions, serving high - growth markets such as AI chips, wearable devices, and automotive SoCs. Its independently operated cleanroom factory uses an automated process and a customized packaging architecture, breaking the pattern dominated by traditional OSATs (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test providers).

The establishment of this company reflects Weili Dai's in - depth understanding of the semiconductor industry chain. Against the backdrop of the increasing performance requirements of AI chips, advanced packaging technology has become a key link in performance improvement. Silicon Box's technical route not only meets the market's demand for high - performance packaging but also provides more flexible packaging options for small and medium - sized chip design companies.

In addition to chips and infrastructure, Weili Dai has also delved into the field of AI terminal applications. She is the co - founder and executive chairperson of MeetKai, an AI voice company. MeetKai focuses on natural language processing (NLP) and generative AI virtual - human interaction technology and has launched an AI dialogue engine that can be used in virtual reality, digital twins, intelligent customer service, and education scenarios.

The technical feature of MeetKai is that its AI assistant can not only understand semantics but also handle context logic, enabling multi - round conversations and personalized recommendations. This technical ability has enabled MeetKai to stand out in the highly competitive AI voice market.

Since 2023, MeetKai has reached cooperation agreements with several XR device manufacturers and has become a language - entry technology provider in the metaverse application field. This also reflects Weili Dai's long - term judgment on the trend of "human - machine - environment" integration. Through MeetKai, users can interact with virtual environments more naturally, which is of great significance for the popularization of metaverse applications.

It is worth mentioning that in addition to the above - mentioned companies, Weili Dai also holds 96.3 million shares of Alphawave IP and is the second - largest shareholder of this semiconductor company listed in London. Alphawave IP is a company focusing on high - speed connectivity and semiconductor IP for data infrastructure, providing key technologies for data centers, 5G networks, and other high - performance applications.

In June this year, Qualcomm agreed to acquire Alphawave for approximately $2.4 billion in cash. This transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year, and Weili Dai will then receive a profit of $237 million.

Weili Dai's investment portfolio also includes several companies with forward - looking visions in different technology fields:

Nuvia: A Star Acquisition in the CPU Design Field

Nuvia is a company focusing on high - performance CPU design, founded by former chip design experts from Apple and Google. In September 2020, the company announced the completion of a $240 million Series B financing, in which Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja participated.

Qualcomm announced in January 2021 that it would acquire Nuvia for approximately $1.4 billion. This acquisition became an important success story in Weili Dai's investment portfolio. Qualcomm said that the Nuvia CPU, combined with Qualcomm Technologies' existing leading mobile graphics processing unit (GPU), AI engine, DSP, and dedicated multimedia accelerator, will further consolidate the leading position of the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform and make Snapdragon the preferred platform for future connected computing.

Currently, the Nuvia CPU is being gradually integrated into Qualcomm Technologies' extensive product portfolio, empowering flagship smartphones, next - generation laptops, digital cockpits, advanced driver - assistance systems, extended reality, and infrastructure network solutions.

Nubis

Nubis was founded in 2020. It is a company with world - class expertise in silicon photonics, digital and analog IC design, and electronic and optical packaging. In 2023, the company released a new optical technology platform and its first product. This platform combines record - breaking density and ultra - low power consumption, enabling customers to build the networks they need to fully unleash the processing power of their ML/AI clusters.

This technology is of great significance for large - scale AI training and inference scenarios, especially in the fields of data center interconnection and high - performance computing.

Next Input

Next Input is a company focusing on force - sensing technology, providing MEMS - based force - sensing solutions for the consumer, automotive, IoT, medical, robotics, and industrial markets. In June 2018, the company announced the successful completion of a $13 million Series B financing, and Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja became investors in this round.

In June 2021, Next Input was acquired by Qorvo, Inc. and became the sensor - fusion business unit under Qorvo's Mobile Products Division. The merged company applies NextInput's highly differentiated sensing solutions to the next - generation 5G smartphones and high - performance true wireless stereo (TWS) earphones of major global OEMs, while continuing to occupy an important market share in the next - generation intelligent cockpit field of the automotive industry.

Aviva Links

Aviva Links is an automotive in - vehicle connectivity company, committed to providing the world's highest - performance multi - gigabit links. The company provides standard - based asymmetric multi - gigabit serializers/deserializers (SerDes) for the Automotive SerDes Alliance (ASA) standard to enable an interoperable network architecture.

In September 2021, Aviva Links announced the completion of a $26.5 million Series A financing, co - led by Weili Dai and Sehat Sutardja, bringing the total financing to over $33 million. At the end of 2024, NXP Semiconductors announced that it would acquire Aviva Links for $242.5 million in cash.

NXP said that this acquisition is very important for its advanced driver - assistance systems (ADAS) and in - vehicle infotainment (IVI), such as the in - vehicle digital cockpit of software - defined vehicles (SDV), which require highly asymmetric camera and display networks with high downlink and low uplink bandwidth.

Blue Cheetah Analog Design

Blue Cheetah Analog Design is a startup focusing on building highly customized analog - mixed - signal IP, providing optimized and quickly customizable inter - chip interconnect IP for different packaging types, data rates, I/O configurations, and processes. The company's technology supports "Bunch of Wires", Open Die - to - Die, and Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express, as well as standard organic chip packaging and advanced packaging technologies.

In July 2024, the AI chip startup Tenstorrent announced the acquisition of Blue Cheetah Analog Design. Tenstorrent said that advanced interconnects and other analog/mixed - signal components have proven to be crucial for the performance and efficiency of AI systems