May 26, 2026
Free chips, costly drama
How do you build a semiconductor company on something that's free?
He wants to give chip designs away free, and the internet can’t decide if it’s genius or fantasy
TLDR: Daniel Schultz is trying to build a chip company by giving away designs and making money from support and custom services, like Linux did. Commenters are split between calling it a clever future for trusted, affordable hardware and dismissing it as unrealistic because physical manufacturing is slow, costly, and unforgiving.
A tiny startup is trying to pull off one of tech’s boldest magic tricks: make money by giving away the thing everyone says you’re supposed to protect. Daniel Schultz of aesc silicon is betting that chip design can follow the Linux playbook: give the core ideas away, then charge for help, custom work, and support. In plain English, instead of selling the secret recipe, you sell the cooking lessons. He’s also pitching a big trust angle: if a chip’s design is open from start to finish, buyers can inspect it and feel more confident nothing shady was slipped in.
But the comments? Absolutely split. One camp is cheering the ambition and seeing a future where smaller companies can finally afford to make their own custom chips without drowning in licensing fees. The vibe is very "let people experiment", especially with cheaper test runs making failure less financially terrifying than it used to be.
The other camp is throwing ice-cold water on the dream. The harshest take says this is "fundamentally impossible" because hardware isn’t software: you can’t just move fast and fix it later when every mistake costs real manufacturing time and money. Critics also point out that the free toolset still lags behind the fancy stuff used at the cutting edge, which led to a full-on why would anyone bother? energy.
And then came the comic relief. One commenter dropped the line of the thread, comparing it to asking, "How do you build a tourism business when anyone can walk into the woods for free?" That joke basically captured the whole mood: half skepticism, half admiration, and 100% comment-section chaos.
Key Points
- •The article profiles aesc silicon founder Daniel Schultz, who is building a bootstrapped semiconductor startup around open-source chip IP.
- •Schultz's business model is compared to Linux and Red Hat, with free core IP and revenue coming from support, customization, and services.
- •The article identifies verifiable, auditable security across the chip design and manufacturing chain as a potential key use case for open-source silicon.
- •It argues that lower tooling costs and open IP could enable more small companies to develop custom chips without relying on expensive proprietary EDA licenses.
- •The article highlights IP Forge, a package-manager-style tool for open-source IP blocks, as infrastructure intended to accelerate chip development workflows.