Faran Nouri has recently worked at the forefront of US national semiconductor investment policy at Natcast and America's Frontier Fund.
Faran Nouri has been appointed global head of Applied Ventures, the corporate VC arm of US semiconductor company Applied Materials, rejoining a company where she spent time as an engineer and technology leader more than a decade earlier in her career.
Nouri will lead the firm’s investment strategy and portfolio, focusing on technologies and companies that can accelerate innovation across the semiconductor industry and broader deep tech ecosystem.
Nouri takes over the role from previous unit head Anand Kamannavar who led the unit since 2020, around the time its corporate venturing activities were brought in-house.
Nouri has recently worked at the forefront of US national semiconductor policy. She was a senior partner at the National Center for the Advancement of Semiconductor Technology (Natcast), a non-profit organisation created in 2023 to operate the US CHIPS and Science Act’s National Semiconductor Technology Center. At Natcast she helped set up the programme’s Semiconductor Innovation Fund.
Prior to that, she was a general partner at America’s Frontier Fund, a national security-focused, non-profit investment firm, where she led semiconductor investments.
Nouri also served as vice-president and founding managing director at Lam Capital, US semiconductor provider Lam Research’s corporate venturing arm, and featured on the GCV Powerlist in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 during her time there.
Nouri’s return to Applied Materials brings her full circle to an organisation where she worked in an engineering capacity before expanding her career into venture investing, and comes at a time when semiconductor companies are looking to their corporate investment arms to navigate a dramatic expansion in demand for AI-related computing resources.
Applied Ventures was founded nearly a decade ago with the goal of investing in startups across the semiconductor value chain. The unit is stage agnostic, investing up to $100m per annum. It has invested in more than 90 companies.
See all the recent deals by Applied Ventures in the CVC Funding Round Database
Oishani Mitra
Oishani Mitra is the content manager for Global Corporate Venturing.
