TechSurge: Deep Tech Podcast

Produced by Celesta Capital, a Silicon Valley firm that has been writing checks into semiconductor, AI infrastructure, and frontier hardware companies for years, TechSurge is one of the few venture podcasts that actually engages with the messy reality of deep tech investing. Most VC shows stick to software because software stories are easier to tell. Celesta partners take the harder road, sitting down with founders and scientists building chips, robotics, quantum systems, advanced materials, and the kinds of companies where the path from lab to revenue can take a decade. Episodes feature operators from semiconductor and AI hardware startups Celesta has backed, alongside academic researchers and corporate R and D leaders explaining where the technology is actually heading. The hosts ask questions a generalist investor would not think to ask: what is the wafer yield problem, how does foundry capacity affect scaling, what does it take to recruit a chip designer who already has three competing offers from Nvidia. Episodes typically run 35 to 55 minutes and assume you have at least passing familiarity with how hardware companies are built. If you do not, you will still learn a lot, but expect to look up a few terms. For founders building anything that requires atoms rather than just bits, and for investors trying to understand why deep tech valuations behave so differently from SaaS, TechSurge is one of the most useful sources in the space.