Silvaco waited forty years to go public. Founded in 1984, it makes software that simulates semiconductors at the level of the physics, so engineers can test a transistor before a factory makes one. The company calls this "the technology behind the chip." When it listed in May 2024, governments were spending billions to build chip factories at home, and the Pesic family still controlled the company.

Simulating the Physics

Katherine Ngai-Pesic co-founded Silvaco in 1984 and remained its controlling shareholder. Its core product was TCAD, software that models how materials and voltages behave inside a device. It added EDA tools for circuit design and licensed semiconductor IP. The bet was that chipmakers would rather simulate a device on a computer than pay to build test wafers again and again. Its customers were semiconductor and photonics companies.

Forty Years to the Bell

Silvaco priced its offering at $19 a share in May 2024 and listed on Nasdaq under SVCO. The Pesic family kept special approval rights over any sale or merger while it held at least a quarter of the vote. That gave the founding family a veto over the company's future. The company kept selling to chipmakers and photonics makers around the world. It still trades on Nasdaq as SVCO.

Cover: The Forest of Fontainebleau, Rodolphe Bresdin. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a dense forest drawn line by line (silva, and a chip's maze).