Nagare Labs, an Atlanta-based semiconductor startup, raised $5 million in pre-seed funding led by Playground Global. The company announced the financing on October 26, 2026, as it emerged from stealth and introduced its Z2RAM memory technology for artificial intelligence computing systems.
Founded in 2026 by Dr. Suman Datta and Dr. Shimeng Yu, Nagare Labs is a spinout of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The company develops memory architectures designed to improve data access speed, density and energy efficiency in AI hardware.
Its core technology, Z2RAM, uses a transistor-based, capacitorless memory architecture intended to combine the access speed of static random-access memory (SRAM) with the storage density of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM).
The technology is designed to enable memory layers to be integrated vertically above processor logic, reducing the distance data must travel between memory and computing components. Nagare Labs aims to address bandwidth limitations, latency and energy consumption associated with conventional memory configurations in AI accelerators.
Z2RAM uses oxide-semiconductor transistors and is being developed around established semiconductor manufacturing processes. According to the company, its architecture is compatible with standard back-end-of-line integration techniques, materials and fabrication equipment, potentially supporting manufacturing through existing semiconductor infrastructure.
The company has outlined a development roadmap for multilayer memory integration. Its first-generation performance comparisons remain projections as it works toward commercially manufacturable memory chips.
Co-founder Dr. Suman Datta is the Joseph M. Pettit Chair Professor at Georgia Tech and a co-inventor of Intel’s High-k/Metal Gate and Tri-Gate transistor technologies. He received the 2026 IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award.
Co-founder Dr. Shimeng Yu is a Dean’s Professor at Georgia Tech and a creator of NeuroSim, an open-source simulation framework used in research on emerging memory technologies and AI hardware. He received the 2025 Semiconductor Research Corporation Technical Excellence Award.
Pat Gelsinger, former CEO of Intel and a general partner at Playground Global, serves on Nagare Labs’ board of directors.
With its pre-seed financing, Nagare Labs is pursuing the transition of its memory research into semiconductor manufacturing, focusing on memory technologies for next-generation AI computing infrastructure.
