If industries received 2022 superlatives, the chip market would be a prime contender for “Most Hot and Cold.”

In the past 12 months, we’ve seen historical shifts in the semiconductor market, including both record high demand and a sudden pullback in demand. The industry has also seen hundreds of billions in government investment in the US, the EU, Japan, and China.

Zoom in: Amid all the supply, demand, and policy changes, ASML—a leading semiconductor equipment manufacturer with a market cap of over $230 billion—could be positioned for growth.

• The Dutch semiconductor giant is currently the only manufacturer of EUV lithography machines, the machines that companies like TSMC, Samsung, and Intel use to print the advanced chips that help power devices like your iPhone, your friend’s new car, and even the data centers fueling your network’s social media profiles.

“In terms of predictions for 2023, it’s hard to predict what the general economy is going to do,” Roger Dassen, CFO of ASML, told us. “But the structural trends are still so strong that we are still predicting a healthy growth for ASML.”

Emerging Tech Brew spoke with Dassen about the past 12 months in the chip industry and where we go from here. Click here to read the full story.—HF

Twelve months ago, the world of startup funding was coming off a red-hot 2021, hoping to maintain its record-shattering momentum into the new year. Fast-forward to now, at the start of 2023, and startup funding has slowed to a relative crawl.

In 2022, global venture funding totaled $445 billion, per Crunchbase. That’s a 35% year-over-year decline from the $681 billion startups raised in 2021, representing a steeper pullback than was experienced after the 2008 financial crisis or dot-com bubble, per Preqin data reported by Bloomberg.

If you squint a little…This decline can be read as a simple correction following an irrationally exuberant 2021. Despite the unprecedented contraction, 2022 was still the second-best year for startup funding in the last decade.

• Investors spent $100 billion, or 29% more, in 2022 than they did in 2020, per Crunchbase.

But at the same time...The economic environment has clearly changed in the last year—and so too have the rules of the VC game. Sequoia crystallized this shift last spring with its “Crucible Moment” memo, in which it warned its portfolio companies to cut unnecessary expenses and generally hunker down.

• Q4 2022 was the worst quarter for venture funding since Q1 2020…when, you know, the pandemic hit.

Read the full story on-site.—DM

Coworking is a weekly segment where we spotlight Emerging Tech Brew readers who work with emerging technologies. Click here if you’d like a chance to be featured.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?
I lead teams that find the connective tissue between business problems and far-out solutions (enabled by technology). In other words, teams who think about technology that isn’t quite figured out, and then finding ways to apply it to the here and now of business problems. Basically, looking at the future and applying what’s possible to our current world.

What’s your favorite emerging tech project you’ve worked on?
Tracing milk powder from the fields of New Zealand to the mom and dad in China feeding their newborn, using cutting-edge blockchain and digital technology. This was a project that made a difference to society while also increasing the value of the product being sold. Very cool to see it come to life.

What emerging tech are you most optimistic about?
I continue to be bullish on the concept that blockchain has created, which is creating a truly distributed but secure future technology ecosystem. Considering how to truly leverage innovation at the edges takes a new architecture for data and compute and blockchain, and derivatives have created that. Oh, and quantum is something I spend time with because many worlds is too mind-blowing not to think about

What’s the best piece of tech-related media you’ve read/watched/listened to?
Hands down, Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile?
I have 15 chickens, 13 goats, two emus, four alpacas, four cows, and one herd dog on my ranch in Austin. Oh, and I rescued a mini horse I named Hot Dog.

Stat: EVs made up 5.8% of new-auto sales in the US last year, up from 3.2% in 2021, according to Motor Intelligence data cited by the WSJ. Per Bloomberg, 5% is a historical tipping point for clean-tech adoption.

Quote: “It’s new, a lot of people still don’t know what it is, especially in legacy companies. There is a need for a lot of education. There is a need for ‘show me the money.’”—Katia Walsh, chief strategy and AI officer at Levi Strauss & Co., on rolling out AI projects in large enterprises

Read: Key computer science advances in 2022.

New year, same Monday tradition. It’s trivia time.

Click here to play this week’s news quiz.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• GM’s vision for computerized cars
• Top CTOs predict the key tech trends for 2023
• Trends to watch at CES 2023