The new era of Silicon Valley runs on networking—and not the kind you find on LinkedIn.

As the tech industry funnels billions into AI data centers, chip makers both big and small are ramping up innovation around the technology that connects chips to other chips, and server racks to other server racks.

Networking technology has been around since the dawn of the computer, critically connecting mainframes so they can share data. In the world of semiconductors, networking plays a part at almost every level of the stack—from the interconnect between transistors on the chip itself, to the external connections made between boxes or racks of chips.

Chip giants like Nvidia, Broadcom, and Marvell already have well-established networking bona fides. But in the AI boom, some companies are seeking new networking approaches that help them speed up the massive amounts of digital information flowing through data centers. This is where deep-tech startups like Lightmatter, Celestial AI, and PsiQuantum, which use optical technology to accelerate high-speed computing, come in.

Optical technology, or photonics, is having a coming-of-age moment. The technology was considered “lame, expensive, and marginally useful,” for 25 years until the AI boom reignited interest in it, according to PsiQuantum cofounder and chief scientific officer Pete Shadbolt. (Shadbolt appeared on a panel last week that WIRED cohosted.)

Some venture capitalists and institutional investors, hoping to catch the next wave of chip innovation or at least find a suitable acquisition target, are funneling billions into startups like these that have found new ways to speed up data throughput. They believe that traditional interconnect technology, which relies on electrons, simply can’t keep pace with the growing need for high-bandwidth AI workloads.

“If you look back historically, networking was really boring to cover, because it was switching packets of bits,” says Ben Bajarin, a longtime tech analyst who serves as CEO of the research firm Creative Strategies. “Now, because of AI, it’s having to move fairly robust workloads, and that’s why you’re seeing innovation around speed.”

Big Chip Energy

Bajarin and others give credit to Nvidia for being prescient about the importance of networking when it made two key acquisitions in the technology years ago. In 2020, Nvidia spent nearly $7 billion to acquire the Israeli firm Mellanox Technologies, which makes high-speed networking solutions for servers and data centers. Shortly after, Nvidia purchased Cumulus Networks, to power its Linux-based software system for computer networking. This was a turning point for Nvidia, which rightly wagered that the GPU and its parallel-computing capabilities would become much more powerful when clustered with other GPUs and put in data centers.

While Nvidia dominates in vertically-integrated GPU stacks, Broadcom has become a key player in custom chip accelerators and high-speed networking technology. The $1.7 trillion company works closely with Google, Meta, and more recently, OpenAI, on chips for data centers. It’s also at the forefront of silicon photonics. And last month, Reuters reported that Broadcom is readying a new networking chip called Thor Ultra, designed to provide a “critical link between an AI system and the rest of the data center.”

On its earnings call last week, semiconductor design giant ARM announced plans to acquire the networking company DreamBig for $265 million. DreamBig makes AI chiplets—small, modular circuits designed to be packaged together in larger chip systems—in partnership with Samsung. The startup has “interesting intellectual property … which [is] very key for scale-up and scale-out networking” said ARM CEO Rene Haas on the earnings call. (This means connecting components and sending data up and down a single chip cluster, as well as connecting racks of chips with other racks.)

Light On

Lightmatter CEO Nick Harris has pointed out that the amount of computing power that AI requires now doubles every three months—much faster than Moore’s Law dictates. Computer chips are getting bigger and bigger. “Whenever you’re at the state of the art of the biggest chips you can build, all performance after that comes from linking the chips together,” Harris says.

His company’s approach is cutting-edge and doesn’t rely on traditional networking technology. Lightmatter builds silicon photonics that link chips together. It claims to make the world’s fastest photonic engine for AI chips, essentially a 3D stack of silicon connected by light-based interconnect technology. The startup has raised more than $500 million over the past two years from investors like GV and T. Rowe Price. Last year, its valuation reached $4.4 billion.

When Google’s self-driving car project began testing in the Bay Area back in 2009, its engineers focused on highways by sending its sensor-laden vehicles cruising down Interstate 280, which runs the length of Silicon Valley’s peninsula.

More than 15 years later, the cars are back on the freeway—this time without drivers. On Tuesday, the project, now an Alphabet subsidiary we all know as Waymo, announced that its robotaxi service would now drive on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.

The new service marks another technical leap for Waymo, whose robotaxis currently serve five US metros: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. The company says it will launch in several other US and international cities next year, including Dallas, Miami, Nashville, Las Vegas, Detroit, and London.

Waymo also announced Wednesday that it would begin curbside pickup and drop-off service at San Jose Mineta International Airport, allowing passengers to, theoretically, travel autonomously all the way from San Francisco to San Jose—a service area of some 260 square miles. Waymo has been offering its autonomous taxi service on area service roads since the summer of 2023, but the new freeway service could cut in half the time it takes for a robotaxi to travel from San Francisco to Mountain View, Waymo user experience researcher Naomi Guthrie says.

“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master,” Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov told reporters last week. Highways are predictable, with (mostly) clear signs and lane lines, and a limited set of vehicles and players (trucks, cars, motorcycles, trailers) that a vehicle’s software must learn to recognize and predict. But Waymo executives said that, despite a year of employee- and guest-only highway testing, safety emergencies on highways are relatively rare, so the team was unable to collect as much real-world data as it needed to train its vehicles to operate safely there. Complicating the project was the fact that highway crashes, at high speeds, are subject to the laws of phsyics—and so more likely to maim or kill.

To get ready for highways, Waymo executives say, engineers supplemented real-world driving data and training with data collected on private, closed courses, and data created in simulations. Two onboard computers help create system “redundancies,” meaning the vehicles will have computer backup if something goes wrong. The vehicles have been trained to exit highways in the case of emergencies, but will be able to pull over as well. Waymo execs also say they have and will work with law enforcement and first responders, including highway patrols, to create procedures for vehicles and riders stranded on highway shoulders, where hundreds of Americans are killed every year.

Apparently, it’s always Friday at the Home Depot. Or at least, the Home Depot Black Friday deals have slipped all customary bounds of the calendar: Online deals started November 5 and will go all the way to December 3.

This includes some very steep discounts on flagship tool brands like Milwaukee, Ryobi, and DeWalt tools—by which I mean half-off and buy-one-get-one steep. Seemingly half the store is on sale. But here’s an early look at some of the best deals to look out for as Black Friday rings in early.

Discounts on Google Nest and Other Smart Home Devices

A couple of WIRED’s top-tested smart home devices from Google Nest have significant discounts at Home Depot right now, alongside discounts on a mess of smart home devices from Echo, Eufy, and others.

The newest Nest Learning Thermostat is a genuine blockbuster device in its category, and the Home Depot is selling it for the lowest price I can find at any retailer right now. The Nest is pretty on the eyes and has no trouble with disconnections or irregularities in the temperature readout, which are surprisingly common among smart home thermostats. It also offers a bunch of fun features, including a readout that changes depending on your proximity to the device. Even better, the Nest thermostat comes with an external temperature sensor that lets you prioritize the readings in a specific room (or part of a room). This allowed WIRED reviewer Nena Farrell to tune the device to her toddler’s bedroom to keep it from getting too stuffy. The larger screen size is also a noticeable upgrade from previous generations, she noted.

The Nest Cam Outdoor 2K requires a little installation, sure: You’ll need to screw in the mount and run a cable. But the cam offers 2K video quality and two-way audio, and doesn’t waste your time with a string of ambiguous notifications like a lot of outdoor cameras: It can accurately detect people, animals, and vehicles. The camera offers sharp video with a 152-degree field of view. It’s the wired outdoor cam that WIRED reviewer Simon Hill recommends above all others—but note that while notifications and live feed don’t require a subscription, you’ll need a $10- or $20-a-month subscription to access more advanced features that include detection of Familiar Faces and 30 to 60 days of video history. Anyway, it’s 20 percent off for Black Friday at the Home Depot, alongside sales on a whole host of other smart home devices.

Buy-One-Get-One Deals on DeWalt Tools

A few tools from home improvement staple DeWalt are on sale for buy-one-get-one at the moment. It’s a bit tough to sort out on the Home Depot’s site, but essentially you’ve got a mix and match of a few select DeWalt tools.

Buy one, and any of the other tools is free. This includes the 13-Inch Cordless String Trimmer ($139), the 20V Cordless Leaf Blower ($179), the 20V MAX XR Cordless Brushless Jigsaw ($239), and the 20V MAX Cordless Brushless Circular Saw ($229)

Aside from that BOGO deal, you can get a free DeWalt tool with the purchase of a battery, or a free DeWalt battery with the purchase of a tool, as detailed here. Or, kinda most of the rest of the DeWalt toolkit is on sale this month for somewhere between 20 percent and 50 percent off. It’s not the steepest discount on the list, but might I suggest WIRED’s absolute favorite drill and driver kit, on sale now for $50 off?

Photograph: Home Depot

DeWalt

20V Max 1/2-Inch Cordless Drill

The Home Depot Milwaukee Tools for 50 Percent Off

During the Home Depot’s month-long Black Friday sale, you can also opt to go with buy-one-get-one or 50-percent-off deals on a number of Milwaukee tools. WIRED Reviewer Scott Gilbertson is already on record as loving the Milwaukee Tool ecosystem as a smart investment—to make use of Milwaukee’s excellent battery tech. He now owns dozens, from impact guns to circular saws and a drywall screw gun.

Anyway, the most essential tool in the kit, Milwaukee’s M18 Fuel Brushless Cordless Hex Impact Driver ($179), is on a buy-one-get-one sale alongside other select Milwaukee tools as part of a buy-one-get-one deal that also includes Milwaukee’s brushless cordless grinder ($229) and cordless personal inflator ($199). Other tools include free batteries with select tools, or vice versa.

It’s not always easy when browsing the general site to see which tools are on the BOGO deal, but click the button below and take note of the tools marked “Free With Purchase.”

Buy-One-Get-One Makita, Ryobi, and Ridgid Tools

Once you’ve bought into a tool ecosystem, it’s kinda part of your life now: You’ve chosen a battery pack that will power a whole world of powered implements. Different WIRED staffers have their own preferences. For WIRED reviewers Julian Chokkattu and Pete Cottell both, their personal world is Makita. And Makita is one of the brands with a killer buy-one-get-one at the moment: Just buy one of the Makita tools here and you can select either a free battery pack, or a freebie among seven other Makita tools in the $200 range.

WIRED has not tested all these tools, but Ryobi has a similar deal, on its affordable tool sets, with a BOGO deal on multiple tools and batteries, including an 18-volt, oscillating, sanding, and cutting multitool ($79) for wall and panel work, and an impact wrench ($99).

Ridgid has a similar deal, with a different product set. Ridgid tool bundles with batteries are up to 60 percent off, especially a cordless blower deal with a battery starter kit for more than half off.

Ridgid

18V Brushless Cordless Battery Leaf Blower with Battery and Charger

Free Christmas Tree Delivery

I remember two things about Christmas-tree shopping as a kid, which was always the best and the worst day. Picking out the tree was, of course, plenty exciting. But then you had to load it. And you had to move it, after wrangling it into a pickup truck. Then you had to unload it, and get it into the house. By the time you’re clear of all that, you might as well just forget Christmas spirit.

Well, the internet is a many-splendored thing. The Home Depot is offering free delivery on Christmas trees during Black Friday, on anything from artificial trees (here’s the best-seller right now) to fresh-cut fir, which is already coming into stock but only from online-only vendors. (Or, if you’d rather, check out WIRED’s roundup of the best artificial Christmas trees, as tested by professionals.

Artificial trees or real ones show up at your doorstep at no additional charge, no pickup truck required. Because we already live in the future.

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