Looking forward to hearing founders Cynthia Liao, Manuele Aufiero, and Michael Lafferty speak at Tough Tech Summit 2025 next week alongside other deep tech founders and investors like Playground Global principal Rahul Meka! Full agenda and link to register here: https://lnkd.in/g-Cm_6eu
Playground Global
Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
Palo Alto, CA 18,288 followers
We invest somewhere between the improbable and the impossible.
About us
Playground Global is an early-stage deep tech venture capital firm investing in technical founders to transform ambitious ideas into high-impact businesses. We help build companies at the earliest stages, leveraging our engineering expertise and commitment to founders taking scientific and technological risks. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Playground invests in areas like next-generation computing, automation, energy transition, and engineered biology. Our portfolio includes pioneering companies such as PsiQuantum, MosaicML (acq. by Databricks), d-Matrix, Agility Robotics, Ultima Genomics, and Strand Therapeutics. Learn more at www.playground.vc
- Website
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http://www.playground.global
External link for Playground Global
- Industry
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- Palo Alto, CA
- Type
- Partnership
- Founded
- 2015
- Specialties
- Investment, Innovation, AI, Robotics, Frontier Technology, Venture Capital, Early Stage, Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Logistics, Cybersecurity, Next-Gen Compute, Computing, and Automation
Locations
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Primary
Get directions
380 Portage Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94306, US
Employees at Playground Global
Updates
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Playground Global reposted this
🚀 Proud to share that Ideon Technologies has been named one of Canada’s 50 fastest-growing tech companies! Achieving 938% revenue growth between 2021-2024, Ideon ranks #33 in the 2025 Technology Fast 50™ category. We see this is a testament to our hard-working team’s dedication and ability to turn breakthrough science into real-world value. Since being named a Company to Watch winner in 2023, we’ve continued to scale the Ideon REVEAL™ platform, delivering measurable value to the global mining industry. Our technology helps reduce risk, lower costs, and accelerate time to market. We’re deeply grateful for our team, partners, and customers for being part of this journey. 👉 Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/gyWQwPEh Shout-out to the other BC recipients: UniUni veritree Apera AI Oxygen8 Corinex Hydreight Technologies (TSXV:NURS, OTCQB:HYDTF) CyberQP Saltworks Technologies: Industrial Water + Lithium Owl.co and MineSense Technologies Ltd. 🚀 Full list in The Globe and Mail: https://lnkd.in/gHsDjh8f #Innovation #MiningTech #Fast50 #SubsurfaceIntelligence
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Playground Global reposted this
Electrical engineering expert with four+ decades of technology leadership and experience
Congratulations to Playground Global on 10 years of turning breakthrough science into world-changing companies. Wonderful to celebrate with the team this week as we look forward to many more years of empowering the industry's best and brightest technologists to redefine what's possible!
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Playground Global reposted this
🌍 We’re thrilled to share that Phasecraft has been selected as a semifinalist in the XPRIZE Quantum Applications competition! This three-year, $5 million global competition is designed to generate quantum computing algorithms that can be put into practice to help solve real-world challenges across areas, including clean energy and public health. Phasecraft’s submission included our recent development of two new complementary quantum algorithms that can plug into classical workflows to revolutionise materials and chemistry modelling. The methods developed would aim to improve the accuracy of electronic structure calculations, which would have immediate impact on the development and discovery of clean energy technologies such as batteries, catalysts and photovoltaics. Our hybrid approach brings real-world applications within reach of today’s quantum devices, not decades from now. It’s a proud moment for our team to be recognised by XPRIZE and it's a signal that quantum algorithms are maturing and moving from concept to real-world impact.
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Introducing Sizable Energy – bringing gigawatt-scale ocean energy storage to the world with: 📣 $8 million in funding led by Playground Global, 🌊 Successful wave tests at MARIN (Maritime Research Institute Netherlands), 🌏 Their next pumped hydro demonstration in the Mediterranean Sea, and 📰 An in-depth story about their "quest to store energy in the ocean" written by TechCrunch senior reporter Tim De Chant: https://lnkd.in/gkTha74F Congratulations to the entire Sizable Energy team including co-founder and CEO Manuele Aufiero for the wave of achievements today!
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Playground Global reposted this
Big news! Sizable Energy has secured $8 million in funding led by Playground Global to supercharge our mission: building gigawatt-scale energy storage in the ocean. The world needs massive, long-duration energy storage to unlock a fully resilient grid. Our team of nuclear, mechanical, energy, and maritime engineers has designed, patented, proven, and de-risked a reliable and economical long-duration offshore pumped hydro system, already demonstrated through experimental campaigns in wave basins and offshore trials. Additional investors include Exa Ventures LLC, Verve Ventures, Satgana, Eden Ventures/IAG, and Unruly Capital, which led our previous round. Read on for the full details: https://lnkd.in/dEWrg9RN #SizableEnergy #GWScaleOceanEnergyStorage #LongDurationEnergyStorage #LDES #OceanEnergy #PumpedHydro
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🎬 For your deep tech watch now list! Vertical Semiconductor co-founders Cynthia Liao and Dr. Josh Perozek share the story of how they're building the future of power electronics with vertical gallium nitride (GaN). ➡️ This is part of a new series presented by Playground Global about how founders are taking deep tech "From Lab to Launch."
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Playground Global reposted this
For 80 years, computing has been constrained by the same fundamental architecture. On October 22, that changes. Join us to learn more about Maverick-2, the power of dataflow, and the Intelligent Compute Architecture - the next foundation for HPC and AI. Production silicon. Production performance. Production-ready. 🕘 October 22, 2025 | 9:00 AM (EDT) 👉 Add to Calendar: https://lnkd.in/dfY6xRYd #NextSilicon #Maverick2 #TechLaunch #Innovation #ComputeRedefined #AI #HPC #supercomputing #sc25
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Playground Global reposted this
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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⚡ Vertical Semiconductor has raised $11 million in seed funding led by Playground Global to transform power delivery for the next era of compute. Power delivery has become the primary bottleneck in AI hardware. Developed at MIT, the Vertical Semiconductor vertical GaN transistor platform solves this by cutting energy loss, reducing heat, improving efficiency by up to 30%, and shrinking the power system footprint by 50% in AI data center racks. Vertical Semiconductor founders Cynthia Liao, Dr. Josh Perozek, and Professor Tomás Palacios are building the foundational power layer for data centers of the future. Additional investors in the round include JIMCO (Jameel Investment Management Co.), milemark•capital, and Shin-Etsu Chemical. ⏩ Reuters technology correspondent Stephen Nellis covered today’s news: https://lnkd.in/g6sYAW3q