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Silicon Catalyst Expands to its Global Reach to Australia

Silicon Catalyst, the world’s only incubator dedicated exclusively to semiconductor startups, is bringing its proven model Down Under. The move will deliver Australia’s chip innovators access to the same in-kind tools, global partnerships, and mentorship that have helped dozens of deep-tech ventures succeed in the U.S., U.K., and Europe.

In this conversation, James Lougheed, President of Silicon Catalyst Australia, explains why now is the right time for the country’s semiconductor ecosystem to scale — and why Queensland is the perfect launchpad.

Q: Why Australia — and why now?

James Lougheed: Australia’s always punched above its weight in research—photonics, quantum, materials—but we’ve historically been light on commercialization. The engineering talent and creativity are here, but founders often lack the support structure that helps transform prototypes into products and revenue. We’ve had important tech hardware research commercialization successes like Cochlear and Resmed but the wins have been too rare.

That’s changing. State and federal governments are backing advanced manufacturing and sovereign-chip capability, and organizations like Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) are taking real leadership. QIC isn’t just investing capital; they’re demonstrating vision—from advising Queensland Treasury on the PsiQuantum deal to running multiple accelerators under the Venture Capital Development Fund (VCDF). With over A$100 billion under management, they’re an ideal founding partner for us as we bring ChipStart AU to life. We now have a wave of new hardware companies making great strides in Australia including PsiQuantum, Diraq, SQC, Q-CTRL, Quantum Brilliance, Morse Micro and Syenta. Now is the time for Silicon Catalyst to play it’s part to accelerate this momentum.

Q: Tell us more about the ChipStart AU program and what it brings to Australian startups.

James Lougheed: ChipStart is our global pre-seed “startup recipe”—we help founders go from idea to silicon without needing multiple millions in up-front capital. Startups get access to EDA licenses, IP libraries, and production multi-project wafers with our ecosystem partners like TSMC, Synopsys, GlobalFoundries, Arm, and MathWorks. And even more importantly for Australian startups, they tap into a network of 400 advisors—experienced chip executives, technologists, and investors, with most based in Silicon Valley.

The same model has worked brilliantly in the U.K. and now across Europe, and we’re extending it to Australia, Japan, and Southeast Asia. For Aussie founders, it’s a bridge straight into Silicon Valley including global customers, investors, advisors and partners. We’ll also be tapping into unique Australian talent working in Silicon Valley who have signed up as advisors specifically to support young Australian startups. These include key technical staff at companies like Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Cisco, HPE, Cloudflare and others.

Q: Why anchor the program in Queensland?

James Lougheed: We like to say we’re looking for gold, anchored in Queensland. The state’s been a standout in supporting advanced manufacturing and deep tech, with strong university clusters and pragmatic policy. Through our partnership with QIC, we’re launching the largest and most incentivized program for QLD startups, and in parallel we’re establishing a national industry consortium led by Yaja Ventures, ensuring that while Queensland is home base, the reach extends across all of Australia.

Q: What kind of companies do you hope to support here?

James Lougheed: We’re interested in startups working on everything from low-power IoT and RF systems to quantum hardware and sensors—applications from Space and Defense to Medtech & AgTech—anything that benefits from silicon innovation. Australia’s proven it can build world-class enterprise SaaS companies—think Atlassian and Canva—so now it’s time to replicate that commercialization success into more hardware wins.

Q: You mentioned a “hardware renaissance.” What’s driving that globally?

James Lougheed: Ten years ago, back in 2015, none of the world’s top ten companies were doing their own chip design. Today, eight out of ten are. From Nvidia to Apple, hardware’s become the engine of AI, cloud, and connectivity.

The semiconductor market has ballooned from around US $335 billion in 2015 to over US $600 billion today—and it’s heading toward US $1 trillion by 2030. It’s grown $300 billion in the past decade, and we’ll add another $300 billion within just five years. Australia can—and should—be part of that story.

Q: How does Silicon Catalyst fit into that global growth narrative?

James Lougheed: We’re building the infrastructure for innovation. By linking Australia’s brilliant research base, and founding leaders of today with a proven global commercialization platform, we can fast-track the next generation of chip startups.

Our goal is to create an environment where a founder in Brisbane or Sydney can prototype, validate, and tape-out silicon with the same tools and mentorship as someone in San Jose. It’s about levelling the playing field—and exporting Aussie innovation to the world.

Q: What do you hope success will look like five years from now?

James Lougheed: When I was first working in an Brisbane electronics startup 30 years ago, I didn’t have many options and I was fortunate to land where I did. The tech ecosystem has grown tremendously since then, but after 30 years of working in tech in Asia and the US, it’s time for me to play my part and help leverage my expertise along with the leading Silicon Catalyst program offering, to help accelerate further. I hope to see a thriving ecosystem of Australian semiconductor startups shipping real products, raising global capital, and employing thousands of engineers. We’ll have bridged Australia to Silicon Valley and beyond, and proven that this country’s hardware creativity can scale just as its software did.

Closing thoughts

Silicon Catalyst’s arrival marks a new phase in Australia’s deep-tech evolution—one backed by institutional muscle and global know-how. With QIC’s partnership anchoring the effort in Queensland and a clear pipeline to the world’s semiconductor ecosystem, the country’s long-awaited shift from research powerhouse to hardware exporter may finally be underway.