Monika Gupta

California's RF/millimeter-wave startup, Movandi, has secured $40 million in funding to Accelerate Global 5G, Satellite, and Fixed Wireless Access Deployment. The round was led by a $20 million investment from ITHCA Group, the sovereign-backed technology investment firm driving innovation across the Middle East. Movandi’s RF chipsets, beamforming silicon, phased array antennas, and repeater systems have already transformed mmWave economics and performance. The company is leveraging these technologies to enable affordable FWA using 5G and Wi-Fi, non-terrestrial satellite communications, and advanced RF systems for high-throughput terrestrial and satellite networks. What do you think of Movandi's latest funding? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ❓ Are you an RF engineer looking for your next opportunity? I'm offering 1:1 RF Job Search Consultations — focused on resume review, company targeting, and interview preparation. ✅ Book your session: https://lnkd.in/giENppTW 💡 Limited slots available — first come, first served.   

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mmWave is no longer a lab curiosity - it is the backbone of high-capacity links in 5G, fixed wireless access, and backhaul. The attraction is simple: enormous contiguous bandwidth that boosts throughput and reduces latency when paired with smart RF design. Why it matters for RF engineers: - Capacity at scale - multi-gigabit data rates from 24 to 100+ GHz. - Spatial reuse - narrow beams and massive MIMO shrink interference footprints. - Convergence of comms and sensing - precise positioning and awareness. - Compact integration - antenna-in-package and phased arrays reduce size and cost. The tradeoffs are real: high path loss, blockage, PA efficiency, linearity, thermal density, and calibration. Winning teams embrace system co-design - link budget to packaging, RFIC to algorithms - and use hybrid beamforming, advanced materials, and intelligent power management. If you are building networks, mastering mmWave is not optional - it is the competitive edge.

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Are we moving back to Monopoly in Semiconductors? Look at the purchase of National Semi bought by Texas Instrument, Analog Devices bought Maxim, LTC, Infineon bought Cypress Semi and now TI buys Silicon Labs. This essentially means few companies controlling most of the Semiconductors especially analog and low end microcontrollers. What I see is that acquisitions happen in Automotive and Industrial domains. Where does this leave the designers? We saw a similar playout in FPGA market and getting support was a challenge. Good thing is that this enabled companies like Gowin, Lattice and Microchip (Polar Fire). But the challenge I see is that, big companies reduce the product support and focus on products that have higher margins. What happens to companies that use the acquired companies products and support needed. The biggest worry I have is none these companies that were acquired any product architectural similarities. This essentially mean a round of FW/SW retargeting to support the products in its life. I knew few companies (in the defense sector, migrated to FPGA based CPU design to protect the software and not worry about the M&A. Any Indian startup that work on RISCV should factor that in mind. Today most startups are weak in mixed signal design and also development tools in addition to libraries. One idea I think we should do is to create a platform similar to Arduino so multiple RISCV s from different companies can be supported. Watch out how Arduino has become a property of Qualcomm and they now promote devices which are 32bit and not needed for many small application. Bharath Semiconductor Society (BSS) Amudhan Balasubramanian should take this and create a common solution. This solution should support a low RTOS like Zephyr with a robust IDE which should be available either a low cost or free version Ravindra Nuguri

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The AI Infrastructure Gigacycle: A Primer for 2026 My latest report via our new newsletter, The Dilligence Stack. The global semiconductor market is on track to reach $975 billion in 2027—within striking distance of the $1 trillion milestone originally anticipated for 2030. The sheer upside of this statistic seems only limited by fundamental constraints in the supply chain. This is an unprecedented moment in the semiconductor industry. One where countless conversations we have had with executives have yielded essentially the same comment/sentiment: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my 30-40-year career in this industry.” https://lnkd.in/gnXeE52i

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Great to see SCINTIL Photonics Jim Theodoras presentation and the huge momentum behind CPO at PECC. Single wavelength CPO is a great first step but DWDM CPO enabled by #SHIP Heterogeneous integrated SiPho will be the ultimate transport architecture. The narrative is quickly shifting from "copper where you can, optics where you must" to a single unified DWDM CPO architecture in both #ScaleUp and #ScaleOut with power, reliability, cost, latency, reach and total bandwidth superior to copper .

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Excited to see Astera Labs and Alchip collaborate to accelerate AI infrastructure innovation. This partnership brings together cutting-edge interconnect and custom silicon expertise to power next-gen data center solutions.

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The company I co-founded, Vertical Semiconductor, has raised $11M to build the foundational power layer for the next era of AI compute. AI is outgrowing today’s power systems. So we’re building what comes next, with high density, high efficiency, high voltage Vertical GaN power electronics.  Today’s funding news – a seed round led by Playground Global with participation from JIMCO (Jameel Investment Management Co.), milemark•capital, Shin-Etsu, Kastor Capital, LLC is a major milestone in our mission. Vertical Semiconductor was born from eight years of research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by my co-founders Dr. Josh Perozek and Prof. Tomás Palacios. Together, we’re redefining what power delivery will look like for decades to come. It has been an immense personal privilege to work with Josh and Tomas to bring fundamental innovations in semiconductor design and fabrication to solve the energy industry’s greatest challenges.  Their pioneering work in gallium nitride (GaN) led to a breakthrough vertical architecture — one that unlocks the material’s full potential for scalable, efficient, and high-voltage power systems. First-in-the-world manufacturing advancements developed by Josh makes this technology ready for the massive scale demanded by the market. Our journey begins in data centers, where rethinking power delivery is essential to unlocking the next generation of compute. As AI data centers moves toward megawatt-scale racks, the bottleneck is no longer compute — it’s power. The infrastructure that moves energy from the grid to the GPUs can no longer keep up. Vertical Semiconductor will enable the power delivery needed for the future of AI. I’m deeply grateful to Matt Hershenson, Bruce Leak, Pat Gelsinger, Peter Barrett, Rahul Meka and the entire Playground Global team for believing in us and our vision of the future. We are incredibly lucky to partner with investors that bring such deep technical expertise and high conviction in building deep technology companies that matter. We’re also fortunate to have the support of all of our investors, as well as our earliest champions — Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, MIT Proto Ventures, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, MIT Climate and Energy Prize, Dr. Luis Perez-Breva, PhD and beyond — who helped turn years of research into reality. The future of compute depends on the future of power. With this milestone, we’re accelerating the charge at the frontier of the Vertical GaN revolution — and we’re just getting started.

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Mini-Circuits announces the release of ZHL-20M1G0100(X)+ , a 100W #broadband #HighPower #RF #Amplifier with 52 dB Gain, operating from 20MHz up to 1 GHz. Applications include high power #Testandmeasurement bench , #burnin and #reliability testing, #communications, #UHF, #VHF and #sub1GHz #radar and #satcom and #RF #EMC Test for #Automotive and #industrial #IoT , #ECM, #defense. For more information , visit link below. https://lnkd.in/euGdCcSX

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