2025 TechTalk Speakers
Unlocking the Power of AI in EDA
The semiconductor industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, and this growth comes with significant challenges—more design starts, rising design complexities, shorter time-to-market, and a shrinking talent pool. To address these challenges, semiconductor companies are turning to AI-powered EDA solutions. While mainstream AI & GenAI technologies have seen rapid consumer adoption, adapting these AI technologies for EDA use cases is not straightforward due to stringent quality requirements for semiconductor design.
Ideally, EDA AI solutions that provide productivity boosts to chip designers and engineers should (a) seamlessly analyze design and verification data, (b) optimize complex processes, and (c) generate better designs. Across these functional areas, we will discuss illustrative ML, GenAI, and Agentic approaches. Additionally, we will also discuss the challenges associated with AI adoption, including data availability, model interpretability, and computational demands.
Further, we will discuss the grand vision of having a purpose-built centralized EDA AI platform. Such a platform framework can be very powerful by combining sophisticated foundational models or even IC domain-specific foundational models with a multimodal data lake to bring GenAI capabilities to push the boundaries of semiconductor innovation, paving the way for more efficient, scalable, and intelligent design processes.
Join us to explore the capabilities of EDA AI and see what the future holds!
ABOUT: Amit Gupta is a technology executive and serial entrepreneur with over two decades of leadership in semiconductor design automation and AI innovation.
At Siemens EDA, Amit leads the Custom IC division and spearheads AI initiatives across the organization. Under his direction, the team develops cutting-edge AI technologies for the Siemens EDA portfolio, and solutions for variation-aware custom IC design, library characterization, IP validation, simulation, schematic capture, and layout—products that power the chips found in today's most advanced electronic devices.
A proven entrepreneur, Amit founded Solido Design Automation in 2005, and as President & CEO built it into the market leader for AI-based semiconductor design tools before its successful acquisition by Siemens in 2017. Previously, he founded and became President & CEO of Analog Design Automation (1999), which pioneered breakthroughs in circuit design automation and was acquired by Synopsys in 2004.
Amit holds dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan.
Beyond Automation: How Agentic AI is Reinventing Chip Design and Verification
Semiconductor innovation is at a critical juncture, demanding next-generational methods to overcome rising complexities, shorter design cycles, and intense competitive pressures. Traditional EDA tools are constrained by manual processes and limited intelligence, but what if we could transcend these limitations?
Enter AI Agents—the AI solution leveraging large language models and advanced algorithms to continue to improve themselves. In this talk, Prof. William Wang, Founder & CEO of ChipAgents, will introduce how AI agents go beyond traditional EDA automation, embedding agentic intelligence capable of independently handling hardware modeling, constraint-solving, automated debugging, testbench generation, and even proactive design optimization. Highlights include Use Cases, Scalability & Reliability: Case studies illustrating substantial productivity improvements, enhanced design quality, and accelerated time-to-market achieved by leading semiconductor enterprises deploying AI Agents. AI Agents in Action: Real-world scenarios demonstrating how AI agents autonomously identify critical bugs, optimize RTL designs, and significantly shorten verification cycles.
ABOUT: William Wang is an internationally recognized pioneer in artificial intelligence and the visionary Founder and CEO behind ChipAgents. He's also Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Endowed Chair Professor in AI and Design at UC Santa Barbara. His pioneering research has earned numerous prestigious accolades, including the IEEE Laplace Award, NSF CAREER Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Karen Sparck Jones Award, and IEEE AI’s 10 to Watch. William’s vision drives ChipAgents’ mission to transform semiconductor design through intelligent, agentic AI systems.
2025 Analysts
Accelerator Package and System Design For The AI Era
This session will discuss the design of accelerator packages and systems tailored for the AI era, addressing the need for improved performance, scalability, and energy efficiency to support complex AI workloads.
ABOUT: Through Dylan’s dedication and vision, he has grown SemiAnalysis from a solo venture into a highly respected semiconductor market research firm. Since 2020, Dylan has expanded the business into a cohesive, specialized team, with competitive analysis at its core. The company's success has laid the foundation for fully realizing this vision within its new business unit.
A View from Wall Street
We will examine the financial performance and key business metrics of the EDA industry through 2024, the further consolidation of EDA (the combination of Synopsys-Ansys), as well as the material technical and market trends and requirements that have influenced EDA business performance and strategies. Among the trends, we will again examine the progression of semiconductor R&D spending and how the market values of the publicly-held EDA companies have evolved. Lastly, we will provide our updated financial projections for the EDA industry for 2025 and 2026.
ABOUT: Mr. Vleeschhouwer has over four decades of research experience. He is a senior industry analyst covering Engineering and Enterprise Software, responsible for fundamental research of companies under coverage, including the regular publication of proprietary company and industry reports and detailed company and industry financial modeling. Principal industry reports include The Software Standard (software industry commentary, news, data, and analysis) and The State of EDA (quarterly in-depth review of Electronic Design Automation). He has appeared multiple times in the Institutional Investor "All-America Research Team" rankings and was ranked by Refinitiv Starmine Analyst Awards (U.S.) #1 in "top stock pickers" for software (2020). He has been regularly invited to present at software and other industry conferences, in addition to broadcast, print and online media appearances.
The Future of Mobility
The way we transport humans and cargo is evolving at a pace not experienced since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
This session will provide a glimpse into the future of mobility, including grand transportation, marine, aviation and space.
We’ll not only discuss vehicle autonomy, electrification and connectivity, but explore how new technologies are impacting other modes of transportation.
ABOUT: Steve has more than 25 years of experience in the automotive technology space. He started his career in 1999 selling software to car dealers and has overseen more than $1 billion in automotive technology acquisitions.
Steve served as TrueCar’s Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, and AutoTrader.com’s Vice President of Product Management and Business Development, overseeing the acquisitions of vAuto, Kelley Blue Book, HomeNet Automotive, VinSolutions, and DealerScience.
Earlier in his career, Steve served as Manheim’s Director of International Development, spearheading Manheim’s overseas investments, including establishing new joint ventures in Dubai, Istanbul and Beijing.
He is the author of two books: "The Future of Automotive Retail," and "The Future of Mobility." He is also the author of the Weekly "Intel Report."
For fun, he likes to ride his three motorcycles on the racetrack and hang out with his twelve rescue cats.