PearX Demo Day: Hardware Ambitions and AI Efficiency
AI-generated image · US National Wire
New cohorts from Pear VC's accelerator showcase high-risk plays in semiconductor design and spatial modeling.
Pear VC recently held its PearX demo day in San Francisco, showcasing 16 startups from its 12-week accelerator program. As TechCrunch first reported, two of the most buzzed-about companies are attempting to disrupt capital-intensive hardware and spatial sectors.
Saia, founded by 20-year-old Ayaan Govil, aims to challenge Nvidia's dominance in local AI. TechCrunch reports that Saia is developing a chip that runs inference directly from flash storage to bypass power-hungry memory. The startup claims its hardware offers eight times the capacity and uses four times less power than Nvidia's Jetson. While Saia is in discussions with Samsung for memory integration, it does not plan for mass production until 2028, with test chip fabrication starting next year.
In the spatial sector, Speridlabs is developing foundational models for robotics and gaming. TechCrunch notes that Speridlabs created "Mundus," a tool designed to maintain persistent geometry when parts are modified—a capability the startup claims is missing from competitors like Google's Genie, Odyssey, and Runway.
Other notable graduates include Veros, an AI trust and estate planner currently managing $250 million in AUM and seeking a trust charter; Datum, which uses "Geometric Fingerprint" technology to index 3D industrial designs; and Ren, a privacy-focused AI assistant using automated voice systems. Pear VC, which can invest up to $2 million in these companies, previously backed Andera, which TechCrunch reports raised a $37 million Series A from Lightspeed this summer.