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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsThe 2024 Silicon 100 is EE Times’ annual editorial list of 100 promising electronics and semiconductor startups. It is useful for spotting technology themes and companies for further research, but it is not a ranked list, investment recommendation, stock index, or guarantee that any listed company will succeed.
What is the Silicon 100?
“Silicon 100: Startups Worth Watching in 2024” is the 24th edition of EE Times’ annual Silicon 100. The article, published on July 8, 2024, was written by Anne-Françoise Pelé and Peter Clarke.
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The list focuses on startups in electronics and semiconductors. “Silicon” is used broadly: the companies may work on chips, AI computing, quantum hardware, photonics, displays, materials, packaging, security, or related technologies.
It is best understood as an editorial discovery and trend-mapping resource. It is not:
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- a ranking from first to 100th;
- a venture-capital fund portfolio;
- an accelerator or certification;
- proof of revenue, profitability, product-market fit, or technical superiority; or
- a substitute for investment or partnership due diligence.
EE Times describes the 2024 edition as spanning 24 technology areas and mapping where technical expertise, innovation, and geographic startup activity intersect. The publicly visible article does not enumerate all 24 categories.
Read the original EE Times announcement and access the report.
What stood out in the 2024 edition?
The 2024 list reflects several important directions in hardware and deep technology:
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AI capabilities continued to expand beyond cloud data centers. Edge-AI companies aim to process models closer to sensors, devices, factories, vehicles, or other endpoints. That can reduce latency, bandwidth use, and reliance on the cloud, but it creates difficult constraints around power consumption, memory, thermal design, model deployment, and software support.
Chiplets and advanced packaging
Chiplets can allow designers to combine modular dies rather than building every function on one large monolithic chip. The approach may improve flexibility and time-to-market, but it also brings integration, thermal, testing, yield, interoperability, and supply-chain challenges.
Quantum technologies
Quantum hardware remains a long-term opportunity rather than a straightforward near-term commercial market. Investors and partners need to distinguish laboratory progress from a complete system that can be manufactured, operated reliably, and sold to customers.
Materials, devices, and manufacturing infrastructure
Some of the most consequential semiconductor advances begin below the application layer, in materials, power devices, process technology, packaging, and manufacturing tools. These businesses can have substantial technical value while facing long qualification cycles and high capital requirements.
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Photonics and sensing startups may benefit from demand in communications, industrial systems, automotive applications, and healthcare. Display innovation can open new device categories, while hardware and embedded security address growing risks in connected systems. In each case, packaging, calibration, reliability, integration, and customer adoption can matter as much as the underlying invention.
Companies publicly associated with the 2024 list
The full report is form-gated, and the public announcement does not display all 100 companies. The names below are therefore representative examples, not a complete reproduction or ranking.
| Company | Publicly reported connection | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Normal Computing | Named on Celesta Capital’s reference page. | The available public material does not establish its exact category, rank, or selection rationale. |
| Alif Semiconductor | Named on Celesta Capital’s reference page. | Its inclusion should not be treated as evidence of commercial traction without separate diligence. |
| SambaNova Systems | Named on Celesta Capital’s reference page. | Do not infer a ranking, newcomer status, or specific selection reason from the mention alone. |
| Literal Labs | The company announced inclusion and described its work on edge AI using Tsetlin machines. | Its claim that the approach can be “up to 10,000× more efficient” is a company claim requiring precise benchmark conditions and independent verification. |
| Nanopower Semiconductor | The company said it was one of 39 newcomers and was listed in the Analog, Mixed-Signal, and PMIC category. | The newcomer, category, European-company, and methodology-related figures are company-reported unless confirmed in the original report. |
| Epishine | Nanopower identified the Swedish indoor-photovoltaics company as another newcomer and partner. | Its official category and current status require separate confirmation. |
| Q-Pixel | The microLED-display company announced inclusion and described recognition in display devices, displays, and driver chips. | Its technical milestones are company or press-release claims, not automatically independent validation. |
Sources for these named-company references include Celesta Capital, Literal Labs, Nanopower Semiconductor, and Q-Pixel’s announcement.
How was the list assembled?
EE Times’ public announcement confirms the list’s scope, size, technology grouping, and purpose, but it does not publish a detailed methodology on the visible page.
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Nanopower’s account says the selection considered factors such as fundraising activity, strategic alliances, scalability, addressable markets, and the quality of founders and advisers. That description should be treated as a listed company’s account rather than a complete official methodology statement unless the downloaded report confirms it.
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Nanopower also reported 39 newcomers and 29 European companies in the 2024 edition. Those figures should be attributed to Nanopower when cited.
How investors and business leaders should evaluate a listed startup
Inclusion is a starting point for research. A practical review should examine at least seven areas:
- Technology relevance: Does the company address a meaningful bottleneck in computing, power, manufacturing, sensing, connectivity, security, or design?
- Technical differentiation: Is the advantage demonstrated in performance, energy use, cost, manufacturability, software, integration, or another measurable area?
- Product readiness: Is there working hardware, a shipping product, an evaluation kit, a design win, or only a research prototype?
- Manufacturing feasibility: Can the company access suitable foundries, packaging, testing, components, and suppliers at the required scale?
- Customer evidence: Are customers evaluating the product, designing it in, paying for it, or merely participating in a research collaboration?
- Capital and runway: Does the company have enough funding to survive development, qualification, production ramp, and potentially long sales cycles?
- Ecosystem strength: Does it have credible relationships with foundries, EDA vendors, packaging providers, distributors, cloud platforms, OEMs, universities, or strategic industry partners?
Why semiconductor startups are difficult to assess
Hardware businesses can look technically impressive and still struggle commercially. Semiconductor startups often face:
- long development, customer evaluation, and qualification periods;
- high nonrecurring engineering and tooling costs;
- dependence on foundries, advanced packaging, EDA tools, and component suppliers;
- customer concentration and resistance to redesigning an existing product;
- difficulty moving from prototype volumes to reliable mass production;
- the need to provide software, firmware, development tools, documentation, and long-term support;
- geopolitical, export-control, and supply-chain exposure; and
- financing risk during capital-intensive scale-up.
A technically superior product may still lose if it is too expensive to integrate, lacks software support, depends on one supplier, arrives after the market has moved, or cannot survive the customer’s qualification timetable.
Best Value
What the Silicon 100 does—and does not—tell you
It can help identify
- emerging technology themes;
- companies that may merit technical or commercial review;
- potential partnership and acquisition candidates;
- geographic clusters of startup activity; and
- areas where investors may want deeper sector research.
It cannot establish
- that one company is better than another;
- that a company has a viable business model;
- that a product is independently validated;
- that a startup is still operating, independent, funded, or shipping in 2026; or
- that inclusion is a recommendation to buy securities or invest private capital.
How current is the 2024 list?
The 2024 edition is now historical. EE Times’ author archive confirms that a 2025 Silicon 100 edition was published on July 16, 2025. Anyone assessing a company in 2026 should not assume that its 2024 status remains unchanged.
For a current review, verify the company’s present operating status, ownership, funding, products, customers, manufacturing partners, acquisitions, and regulatory position individually. Useful evidence can include current product documentation, evaluation-board availability, customer references, regulatory filings, funding announcements, and foundry or packaging partnerships.
Do not use the 2024 list to claim that a company is still privately held, solvent, independent, or commercially successful as of 2026.
How to access the complete 100-company report
The official EE Times page presents the report as a free download through a form requesting professional and contact information, including name, business email, job title, company, industry, job function, and location. The public article itself does not reproduce the complete list.
For that reason, a responsible article should not reconstruct all 100 names from search snippets or company announcements. Use the official report for the complete list and its category assignments:
EE Times: Silicon 100—Startups Worth Watching in 2024
Bottom line for investors and industry readers
The 2024 Silicon 100 is a useful map of emerging electronics and semiconductor bets, especially across AI, chiplets, quantum technologies, materials, packaging, photonics, displays, and security. Its value is in generating research leads—not in predicting winners. Treat every inclusion as an invitation to examine technology, customers, manufacturing, financing, and execution risk before making an investment, partnership, or strategic decision.
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