Niha Mathur

Elie Schoppik has spent his career at the intersection of education and engineering. He built early ed-tech tools that helped people actually retain knowledge, founded a Bay Area coding bootcamp that trained thousands of developers through practice and feedback, and now leads Technical Education at Anthropic. Despite all that experience, Elie says most teams are using AI wrong: they’re treating it like an all-knowing oracle instead of a tutor. This is why Elie designs prompts, examples, and workflows that treat AI as a teacher, instead of a shortcut. In our conversation, we discuss: • Why relying on AI for “fast answers” erodes judgment and verification • How to turn prompts into guided lessons • Why context engineering is the most underrated skill in 2025 • Practical exercises any team can run tomorrow to raise AI fluency • What leaders should steal from Anthropic’s approach to technical education  Episode is live now — full conversation linked in the comments.

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When most people hear "solid-state," they think storage. But in Santa Clara, xMEMS Labs just gave that term new resonance, literally. The company just raised $21M in Series D funding led by Boardman Bay Capital Management, with Cloudview Capital, CDIB-TEN Capital, Harbinger Ventures, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, and other strategic investors tuning in. This isn't another round of capital, it's an #amplifier for a company turning silicon into a new language of #sound and #cooling for the AI era. Founded in 2018 by Joseph Jiang and Jemm Liang, xMEMS spun out of piezoelectric R&D at TSMC and turned what was once wafer-level theory into commercial hardware. Joseph Jiang, a veteran of Knowles, Fortemedia, and InvenSense, leads with precision and swagger, while Jemm Liang, who built Ultrachip from the ground up, drives the engineering with surgical focus. Co-Founder & CLO Wei-Fu Hsu, the former MediaTek exec and IP expert, ensures xMEMS' innovation is as protected as it is disruptive. Their play? A monolithic MEMS platform that transforms voltage into vibration, silicon into sound. Unlike legacy coil speakers and fans, xMEMS tech doesn't move parts, it moves markets. Over 500K MEMS speakers shipped in 1H'24, backed by >250 global patents. The Cypress & Sycamore lines redefine what "small" can do: 1mm-thin, full-range, and capable of sub-bass response once thought impossible in earbuds. Their XMC-2400 µCooling chip, 1mm-thin, fan-on-a-chip, inaudible, moves 39cc/sec of air at just 30mW. That's not cooling, that's choreography at a molecular level. Dr. Chester Hwang, named CTO on Oct 15, 2025, joins to push that curve further. Alongside veterans Mike Housholder (VP Marketing & Biz Dev), Jim Wargnier (VP N.A. & EU Sales), James Lee (VP & Korea GM), Steven P. Bentley (VP Sales), and Martin Lim (VP MEMS Tech), xMEMS is scaling at semiconductor speed. They're already in BleeqUp's AI sports glasses and teamed with Dongguan Rayking Electronics for TWS modules. When OEMs talk "next-gen," they're talking xMEMS-level integration. For investors like Boardman Bay's Will Graves, this isn't just sound engineering, it's signal intelligence. With AI pushing devices thinner, faster, and hotter, xMEMS' piezoMEMS platform sits at the intersection of #acoustics and #thermals, where every millimeter matters. Backing them is a bet that the next wave of #sensorytech won't just compute, it'll feel alive. So what's next? Scaling production, expanding capacity, and embedding xMEMS' silicon pulse into everything from earbuds to AI #datacenters. In a world chasing speed, silence, and fidelity, xMEMS isn't following the beat, they're building the frequency the future will hum to. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #SeriesD #AI #Sound #SoundEngineering #Semiconductors #Data #DataDriven #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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As the sun sets over the bay area, and we had all taken our last Waymo, one thing was crystal clear: 👉 The platform ecosystem is heating up: faster, tighter, and more competitive than ever. The surface area density was super-charged. Every conversation we had? Same undertone: "How do we unlock margin, pricing power, and monetization across my existing PSP stack?" Here’s the uncomfortable truth: 🗣️ Platforms without a Revenue Intelligence Layer will lose to those that have one. Why? 🔥 Embedded finance is now table stakes. 🔥 Margins are shrinking. 🔥 Monetization needs to evolve, fast. Revenew isn’t a dashboard. It’s the Revenue Co-Pilot that helps platforms: 🎯 See what’s leaking. 🎯 Price what’s possible. 🎯 Predict what’s next. The platforms that win? They won’t just be “data-informed.” They’ll be revenue-optimized at every layer. This shift is already happening. CRM changed sales teams. Revenue Intelligence will change platforms. #fintech #platforms #embeddedfinance #stripe #growth #revenuestrategy #payments

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Big M&A news in Seattle startup land as Palo Alto Networks plans to acquire 3-year-old cybersecurity company Protect AI, ranked No. 10 on the GeekWire 200, our list of top tech startups across the Pacific Northwest. It's part of a growing cohort of cybersecurity startups that are based in the Seattle region or have a significant presence in the area. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gfx_pXkS

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scoop:⚡ Nvidia is inviting startups to a private Power Summit next week at its Santa Clara HQ—to talk about the need to get more power to data centers for artificial intelligence. More here: https://lnkd.in/eSNEqapw

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Our panel at Ride AI was recently featured in Business Insider, capturing a much-needed reset in how we talk about autonomy. Alongside Stephen Hayes of Lyft, I shared why I believe ride-hailing will remain a hybrid model of human and autonomous drivers for at least the next 10–15 years. That outlook is grounded in the market model by S&P Global, featured in a recent whitepaper we published together on driver supply and AV integration. Ride AI created the space for these deeper, more practical conversations—bringing together voices from across the AV landscape to move beyond hype and into long-term strategy. Appreciate the Business Insider coverage and the chance to contribute to the dialogue. You can read the full article from Business Insider here: https://lnkd.in/dET6utFv #AutonomousVehicles #MobilityStrategy #RideHailing #RideAI2025

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