Strategy & Startups

I have spent over 40 years turning difficult semiconductor and EDA technology into companies and products, in the UK and the US. I use that experience selectively, with a small number of start-ups, and with the people working on UK and European semiconductor and AI strategy.

Start-ups, boards and investors

I was founder or first European employee of six EDA start-ups in the US and UK: Gateway Design Automation, Chronologic Simulation, Virtual Chips, Ambit Design Systems, Co-Design Automation and Imperas Software. All six were successfully acquired, for a total of over a billion US dollars in 2026 money. I co-founded Co-Design Automation in 1998 and sold it to Synopsys in 2002, and founded Imperas in 2005, which Synopsys acquired in 2023. I have also been a board adviser or non-executive director of several UK private companies, and non-executive chairman of a company funded by Scottish Enterprise.

Many of the hard decisions in those companies were commercial: which market to enter first, when an open standard would help more than a proprietary product, and how a small company works with customers and partners many times its size.

I work with founders, boards and investors in semiconductor, EDA and AI engineering companies on:

• technology and product strategy, and positioning against the large EDA vendors
• the semiconductor and EDA ecosystem: customers, partners and standards bodies
• standards strategy, including when to open a technology up
• partnerships and customer strategy
• the story for fundraising
• preparing for acquisition, and working through it

My current views on where EDA start-ups can win are on the Startups + technology strategy page.

UK and European semiconductor and AI strategy

As governments treat semiconductors and AI as strategic infrastructure, most UK and European strategy work has concentrated on fabrication, packaging and skills. Design capability receives less attention. However, every chip starts with EDA software, processor IP and verification methods, and three companies supply most of the EDA tools used worldwide: Synopsys, Cadence and Siemens EDA. Two of them are American.

As AI moves into design and verification flows, the models, the training data and the compute behind them become part of the same strategic question, and part of what semiconductor and AI sovereignty mean in practice.

I contribute to this work with government, think tanks, universities, industry bodies and strategic advisory groups, through:

• workshops and roundtables
• technical review of policy papers
• independent analysis and challenge
• research, as an AI+EDA researcher at the University of Southampton

More on the UK + European semiconductor strategy page.

Getting in touch

My email address is on the About page.