The future of deep tech will be explained to you at StrictlyVC Palo Alto on December 3

Tomorrow night, at Playground Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who build things you don’t understand yet will show you what’s to come. This is it The final StrictlyVC event of 2025In fact, the lineup is ridiculous.

The series traveled around the world under the auspices of TechCrunch. Steve Case rented a theater in Washington, DC. We spoke with the Prime Minister of Greece in Athens. Kirsten Green hosted us at the Presidio Hotel in San Francisco. However, the concept is always the same: bring people together who are working on really important developments in a smaller framework, before everyone realizes that they are important.

One of our favorite moments was when, in 2019, Sam Altman told a StrictlyVC crowd that OpenAI’s monetization strategy was essentially “building AGI, then asking it how to make money.” Everyone laughed. He wasn’t kidding.

This time, we have Nicholas Keles, a particle accelerator physicist who spent 20 years at the Department of Energy building things that shouldn’t be possible. Now he’s tackling the biggest problem facing semiconductor manufacturing: Every advanced chip relies on $400 million worth of laser-powered machines that only one Dutch company knows how to make. (More infuriating to some is that the Americans invented this technology and then sold it to Europe.) Kelley’s is building America’s next generation using particle accelerator technology. It’s as strange as it sounds but it’s also very important at this moment. There is also increased competition seeking the same award.

Then there is Mina Fahmy, who created a ring that captures your whispered thoughts and turns them into text. Before you roll your eyes, know that he and co-founder Kirak Hong spent years at Meta working on these things after their company was acquired. Stream Ring isn’t trying to be your friend, it’s trying to expand your mind. Backed by Tony Schneider, the operator who scaled WordPress in its earlier days, Sandbar has just come out of stealth and may be on to something. (Schneider is a partner at True Ventures, whose other bets on devices include Peloton, Ring, and Fitbit; he’s also coming to Palo Alto next week.)

We have Max Hudak — founder of Science Corp., cover subject of Time magazine, and, earlier, co-founder of Neuralink (along with Elon Musk) — who has already restored vision to dozens of blind people with retinal implants. He is now working on “biohybrid” brain-computer interfaces where chips grown with stem cells grow into your brain tissue so that paralyzed people can control devices with their thoughts. This is just the tip of the iceberg, says Hudak. In fact, he thinks 2035 will look very different than it does today, and he’s happy to share that.

Finally, we’re excited to welcome Chi-Hua Chien from Goodwater Capital and Elizabeth Weil from Scribble Ventures, two venture capitalists who backed Twitter, Spotify, TikTok, Slack, SpaceX, Figma, and Coinbase before they became household names. Shane runs Goodwater Capital. Will founded Scribble Ventures after stints at Andreessen Horowitz and Twitter, has made over 100 angel investments, and has the first fund to achieve 4x returns. (Its network is so good it’s annoying.) They both think Silicon Valley is completely misreading the moment when everyone is pouring capital into enterprise AI, and they’ll explain why.

Hosted by Playground Global, along with General Partner Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel. There will be drinks, delicious food and merriment. Seating is limited, so if you’d like to get candid insights straight from these VC and tech professionals, and make meaningful connections, then Register to grab your seat before it’s gone. StrictlyVC events have limited seating.

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