On Wednesday evening at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things you don’t understand yet will explain what’s coming. This is the final StrictlyVC event of 2025, and truly, the lineup is ridiculous.
The series has bounced around the globe under the auspices of TechCrunch. Steve Case rented a theater in D.C.; we talked to Greece’s prime minister in Athens; and Kirsten Green hosted us at the Presidio in San Francisco. The concept is always the same, though: bring together people who are working on genuinely important developments in a smaller setting, before everyone else figures out they’re important.
One of our favorite moments was when, In 2019, Sam Altman told a StrictlyVC crowd that OpenAI’s monetization strategy was basically “build AGI, then ask it how to make money.” Everyone laughed. He wasn’t joking.
This time we’ve got Nicholas Kelez, a particle accelerator physicist who spent 20 years at the Department of Energy building things that shouldn’t be possible. Now he’s tackling semiconductor manufacturing’s biggest problem: every advanced chip depends on $400 million machines that use lasers only one Dutch company knows how to make. (More galling to some: Americans invented the technology, then sold it to Europe.) Kelez is building the next generation in America using particle accelerator tech. It’s as nerdy as it sounds but more important than you might imagine.
Then there’s Mina Fahmi, who’s made a ring that captures your whispered thoughts and turns them into text. Before you roll your eyes, know that he and cofounder Kirak Hong spent years at Meta working on this stuff after their company was acquired. The Stream Ring isn’t trying to be your friend — it’s trying to extend your brain. Backed by Toni Schneider, an operator who scaled WordPress in its earlier days, Sandbar just emerged from stealth and might well be onto something. (Schneider is a partner at True Ventures, whose other hardware bets have included Peloton, Ring, and Fitbit; he’s also coming to Palo Alto next week.)
We have Max Hodak — Science Corp founder, Time magazine cover subject, and, earlier, Neuralink cofounder — who has already restored vision to dozens of blind people with retinal implants. Now he’s working on “biohybrid” brain-computer interfaces where chips seeded with stem cells grow into your brain tissue so paralyzed people can control devices with their thoughts. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as Hodak views it. In fact, he thinks 2035 is going to look wildly different from today, and he’s happy to share how.
Finally, we’re thrilled to welcome Chi-Hua Chien and Elizabeth Weil, two VCs who’ve backed Twitter, Spotify, TikTok, Slack, SpaceX, Figma, and Coinbase before they were household names. Chien runs Goodwater Capital and thinks Silicon Valley is completely misreading the AI moment while everyone piles into enterprise AI. Weil founded Scribble Ventures after stints at Andreessen Horowitz and Twitter, made 100+ angel investments, and has a first fund showing 4x returns. Her network is so good that it’s annoying. Both think the best consumer tech opportunities are the ones everyone’s ignoring, and they’ll explain why.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
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October 13-15, 2026
PlayGround Global is hosting, along with general partner Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel. There will be drinks, delicious food, and merriment; seating is limited, so if you want to come, act fast.
If you want to partner with the series in 2026, get in touch.
