On Wednesday, Plug and Play NeoCity Semiconductors again brought together corporate partners, investors, ecosystem leaders, startups, and regional stakeholders for Batch 4 startup pitches. Fifteen pioneering companies in the fields of Novel Fabrication and Advanced Manufacturing, Defense, Power, and Sensing, and Software and Edge AI outlined their proposed projects to an audience numbering about 200 people.
Plug and Play Semiconductors (PNP) is a hi-tech venture capital firm that collaborates with partners worldwide to identify startups, foster cross-sector partnerships, and help build innovation ecosystems like Osceola County’s NeoCity. The company brought the first round of startup pitches to NeoCity in 2024, with two more rounds in 2025. On Wednesday afternoon, two successful “alumni” startups from previous batches, Plaid Semiconductors and PhantaField, updated their progress.
“Our cost effective, space radiationtolerant AI chip will be launched aboard a SpaceX vehicle in 2027,” said Xuejun Sheldon Xie, CEO of PhantaField.
Interspersed with the startup pitches were discussion panels with state and national industry thought leaders, along with panelists from PNP, Osceola County, and regional and state agencies.
Some key takeaways emerged from the panel discussions. First, the national CHIPS Act effort to “re-shore” highend chip manufacturing, currently centered in Taiwan, which has been subject to constant threats of attack and occupation by Communist China, has yielded tangible results.
“Chips have become a geopolitical weapon. Today, the U.S. share of advanced manufacturing of chips has increased from 12 percent in 2020 to 22 percent - a ten percent increase. European Union countries have also been successful in re-shoring,” said Clara de Ros of Plug and Play Ventures.
Semiconductors, then called microchips, were invented in the U.S. in the late 1950s, and the country’s share of worldwide production had been as high as 37% as recently as 1990.
Another takeaway from de Ros was the start of a trend for large tech companies, including META, Google, and Amazon, to begin making their own advanced chips to protect their supply chains and initiate and control the development of customized chips to accelerate their specific innovation efforts. This has implications for the startups that are attracted to venues like NeoCity. Now, as new companies show promise in “deep tech” areas of interest to the industry giants, they may receive early offers to purchase products in development for exclusive rights, or to outright buy the entire intellectual property of a budding high-tech firm.
Finally, throughout the day, several presenters remarked how the current “hype” surrounding artificial intelligence, or AI, is actually background noise compared to the ongoing required purposeful application of AI to enhance the performance of chips for highly specific uses.
During another panel discussion, a presenter made a major announcement from the dais. Tarak Ray, Senior Vice President of Cadence Design Systems, announced that the Silicon Valley-based market leader in AI and digital twins will now have a permanent presence in NeoCity.
For more information about Plug and Play at NeoCity, see https://bit.ly/4ffsW1D.
