The Impact of the CHIPS Act on India

Ari Rubin has 20 years of experience in technology and financial services. Ari was previously senior director of corporate development at Qualcomm where he focused on partnerships, strategy, and M&A. He was also vice president in investment banking at J.P. Morgan and an associate director at UBS Investment Bank. Earlier in his career, Ari was an electrical engineer at Raytheon, Space and Airborne Systems.

Dipender Saluja is Managing Partner of the Technology Impact Fund, Capricorn Investment Group, an investment firm founded to demonstrate that it is possible to invest profitably while driving sustainable positive change. Capricorn manages about $10B in assets for investors who strive for extraordinary investment results by leveraging market forces to accelerate large scale impact. Capricorn's investment process is grounded in comprehensive perspectives on long-term, global trends in technology, energy, healthcare, transportation & agriculture. Capricorn has for two decades sponsored investment partnerships focused on specific areas of impact, such as clean technology, renewable energy infrastructure, renewable resources, and health and wellness. The Technology Impact Fund (TIF) is an early-stage venture capital partnership that invests in companies developing and scaling new technologies, novel materials, devices, and systems as solutions to climate change and other global challenges in energy, transportation, electronics, agriculture, aerospace, infrastructure, and industrial decarbonization. TIF is a key funder and an early investor in iconic companies including Tesla, QuantumScape, Redwood Materials, Joby Aviation, SpaceX, Planet Labs, Innovium, Nuvia, Fervo, FORM Energy, Helion, Seurat, and Twelve. Prior to Capricorn, Dipender was Chief of Staff at Cadence, a global market leader in electronic design, where he built and managed businesses that worked closely with electronics companies around the world. Prior to that he was at Data General (EMC), Honeywell, ROLM (IBM), and GF Energy Research Center. He’s an electrical engineer by training, and attended UND, Univ of Minnesota and Stanford. Dipender serves on the boards of AST, Electric Hydrogen, Encell, Eridan, Halio, Joby Aviation (NYSE: JOBY), Navitas (NASDAQ: NVTS), QuantumScape (NYSE: QS), Saildrone, SPAN.IO, summerbio, and Summit Nanotech, on the Leadership Council of Cyclotron Road, the Advisory Board of the International Solar Alliance, the investment committee of PRIME, the Advisory Board of IonE, and is a commissioner of the Global Commission to End Energy Poverty (GCEEP). He is based in Palo Alto.

Rajeev Madhavan is a Co-Founder and Partner of Clear, where he focuses on early stage technology investments. Rajeev brings operational skills from founding, building and running (as CEO) two highly successful companies. He has the uncanny ability to deeply understand what entrepreneurs are trying to do, and to steer them onto a successful path. He has been a venture investor in over 35 companies. Rajeev’s notable exits include Toast (IPO), Reflektion (Sitecore), Robin ( Rakuten), Apigee (IPO), YuMe (IPO), Virident (acquired), Magma (IPO), Groupon (IPO), VxTel (acquired), LogicVision (IPO) and Ambit (acquired). Prior to founding Clear in 2014, Rajeev founded three successful startups. The most recent, Magma Design Automation, became the 4th largest Electronic Design Automation company in the world under his leadership. Rajeev served as Magma’s Chairman and CEO from when he co-founded the company in 1997 through its acquisition by Synopsys in February 2012 for $580 million. Magma was listed on Nasdaq in 2001 and was ranked as the 2nd fastest growing Technology Company in 2005 by Forbes. Magma provided core infrastructure software to mobile pioneers such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Samsung, which was used to design the core processors at the heart of the smartphone era. Prior to Magma, Rajeev co-founded and served as President and CEO of Ambit Design Systems, which was acquired by Cadence in 1998 for $280 million. Rajeev also co-founded and served as Director of Engineering of LogicVision, Inc. (IPO). Rajeev is a recipient of the Red Herring Top Innovator award, the lifetime achievement award at NITK, India.

Ashu is an early investor in one decacorn (Databricks) and six unicorns (Cohesity, Eightfold, Amperity, Turing, Anyscale, and Alation) … so far. He serves on the boards of Anvilogic, Arize, Coefficient, Cohesity, Conviva, Eightfold, Fortanix, Ikigai Labs, Levo, OpsMx, Stacklet, Skyflow, and Turing. In addition, Ashu was responsible for Foundation Capital’s investments in Aggregate Knowledge (acquired by Neustar), Custora (acquired by Amperity), FreeWheel (acquired by Comcast), TubeMogul (acquired by Adobe), and Tubi.tv (acquired by Fox). Ashu is passionate about helping technical founders find product-market fit, and scale as CEOs. His podcast B2B a CEO has featured Eric Yuan, Ali Ghodsi, Jennifer Tejada, Aaron Levie, and Frank Slootman. Before joining Foundation Capital in 2008, Ashu was the general manager for Microsoft’s online-advertising business and led field marketing for the software businesses. Previously, Ashu worked at McKinsey & Company, helping technology companies scale their go-to-market efforts. Earlier in his career, Ashu founded TringTring.com, one of the first search engines in Asia, set up Unilever’s Nepal operations, and led the marketing and pre-sales teams at Cadence Design Systems. Ashu has a bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore, where he received the President’s Gold Medal. Ashu has lived in India, Nigeria, and the Sudan, and today makes his home in California with his wife, Pooja (an entrepreneur), and their two sons.