Former Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger has joined venture capital firm Playground Capital, where he aims to back "deep tech" semiconductor startups that could reignite Moore's Law, the decades-old prediction that transistor density doubles roughly every two years. Gelsinger left Intel in late 2024 and, after weighing roles in government, academia, private equity and industry, chose venture capital because it lets him focus on unproven, cutting-edge science rather than financial returns alone. He argues that as shrinking transistors becomes prohibitively expensive, the next leap in chip performance will come from advances in lithography, the light-based process used to etch circuits onto silicon.

As part of this push, Gelsinger has taken a board seat at xLight, a lithography startup that has also secured US government investment, and continues to champion progress beyond the 13.5-nanometre wavelength light used by current market leader ASML. He told Wired that artificial intelligence has dramatically widened opportunities in deep tech investing, noting the semiconductor industry is now expected to reach a trillion dollars in value a year earlier than the 2030 target set in 2024. Gelsinger believes many venture firms are chasing this shift without the expertise to properly evaluate unproven physics-based ventures, a gap he says his engineering background allows him to fill.