Can light-based lithography restart Moore's Law for AI chips?

after leaving intel in late 2024, pat gelsinger joined playground capital to focus on deep tech investments, specifically targeting semiconductor startups. he believes the industry has hit a wall with shrinking transistors and sees advanced lithography—using nanometer-scale beams of light—as the path to more powerful ai chips. gelsinger has taken a board seat at portfolio company xlight, which is developing novel lithography techniques funded partially by the us government. he argues that the ai boom has accelerated the semiconductor market toward $1 trillion, creating massive opportunities for firms that can breakthrough physics limitations. this move signals a broader trend of vc money flowing into hardware to support the escalating compute demands of artificial intelligence.