Pat Gelsinger wants to save Moore’s Law, with a little help from the Feds
A year after being pushed out of Intel, Pat Gelsinger is still waking up at 4 a.m., still in the thick of the semiconductor wars — just on a different battlefield. Now a general partner at venture firm Playground Global, he’s working with 10 startups. But one portfolio company has captured an outsized share of his attention: xLight, a semiconductor startup that last Monday announced it has struck a preliminary deal for up to $150 million from the U.S. Commerce Department, with the government set to become a meaningful shareholder. It’s a nice feather in the cap of Gelsinger, who spent 35 years across two stints at Intel before the board showed him the door late last year owing to a lack of confidence in his turnaround plans. But the xLight deal is also shining a spotlight on a…
