There’s heat in the Valley again, and this time it’s coming from something colder than cryo.
Snowcap Compute just stepped out of stealth and straight into the deep end with a $23M seed round led by Playground Global, flanked by Cambium Capital and Vsquared Ventures. The game they’re playing? Superconducting compute. That’s right, actual zero-resistance logic circuits engineered for artificial intelligence, quantum, and high-performance computing. This isn’t sci-fi vaporware or a back-of-napkin physics pitch. This is fabrication-ready tech, backed by decades of sweat, science, and silicon.
Let’s talk people, because this founding team isn’t here to experiment, they’re here to commercialize. CEO Michael Lafferty is fresh off a run leading the “More than Moore” group at Cadence Design Systems, where pushing past CMOS limits wasn’t just the mission, it was the Monday morning meeting. He’s joined by Dr. Anna Herr, Chief Science Officer, who’s authored 73 publications, holds 31 patents, and has probably forgotten more about superconducting circuits than most chip designers will ever learn. And rounding out the core is Dr. Quentin Herr, now CTO, whose research in superconducting computers makes him the guy even the other experts cite.
The result? A platform so efficient it delivers 25x better performance per watt than top-tier silicon, even after you pay the cooling bill. Yes, it runs cold. Superconductors don’t bend, they vanish resistance. That means lower power density, 3D packaging, and compute speeds measured in hundreds of gigahertz. While everyone else is arguing about fab nodes and transistor counts, Snowcap is out here building architecture for the world that comes after Moore’s Law collapses.
Pat Gelsinger didn’t just co-sign, he pulled up a chair. The former Intel CEO retired in December 2024, joined Playground Global in March 2025, and is now Chair of the Board at Snowcap. That’s not a courtesy title, it’s a signal. When the man who ran the world’s largest chipmaker bets his next act on superconducting logic, you don’t ask why. You ask when.
Snowcap’s already built its first test chip, “Snowcap 1,” proving their concept isn’t just viable, it’s needed. And with only 2 to 10 employees on paper, this is a high-frequency, low-drag squad with nothing to slow them down. Their roadmap? Chip by 2026. Systems to follow. Energy savings? Dramatic. Impact on data centers? Existential.
There’s a hard truth that most of the industry avoids: compute is eating the planet. AI servers are burning hundreds of kilowatts per rack, and the energy math just doesn’t work at scale. But superconducting logic flips that equation. It doesn’t chase the curve, it redefines it.
