[News] Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger Backs Memory Startup Eyeing EUV-Free Z2RAM, Targets Samples Within 4 Years

What happened

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is backing Nagare Labs, a memory startup developing Z2RAM. According to The Register, Nagare Labs recently secured US$5 million in seed funding led by Playground Global, where Gelsinger became a partner last year. The company was founded by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers Suman Datta and Shimeng Yu. Z2RAM uses oxide semiconductors and targets SRAM-like speed and DRAM-like density, designed for direct integration on top of logic chips through 3D hybrid bonding and to use standard back-end-of-line (BEOL) processes, allowing multiple memory layers through a single lithography exposure without requiring EUV. The technology remains at the laboratory prototype stage; the startup is seeking an R&D fabrication partner to scale production beyond university cleanroom facilities and plans to sample working Z2RAM memory tiles within four years (a target, not an achieved result), with commercial shipments targeted within the next decade. Z2RAM targets more than five times the bit density of SRAM in its initial implementation, while its capacity would remain far below HBM-equipped accelerators such as NVIDIA's Rubin (288GB) and AMD's MI455X (432GB). Challenges: there is currently no established industry standard for connecting this type of memory to AI accelerators through 3D hybrid bonding, and oxide semiconductors are susceptible to atomic vacancies, so reliability requires further validation.

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Source: TrendForce · 10/27/2026 · View original source