Lam Capital (a/k/a LAM Research)
Lam Capital is the corporate venture arm of semiconductor-equipment maker Lam Research, investing in deep-tech startups across the chip ecosystem. Its one water investment, Membrion, recovers clean water from the metal-laden wastewater that chip factories produce. As of 2026, Lam Capital has backed one water company across two rounds since 2016.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Lam Capital is not a water fund, and it would never claim to be. Lam Capital is the venture arm of Lam Research, the company whose etching and deposition machines sit inside most of the world's chip factories, and its mandate is the semiconductor ecosystem: AI chips, advanced packaging, materials, automation. Water shows up for one very practical reason - making chips takes oceans of ultrapure water and spits out wastewater laced with copper, nickel and tin.
Lam Capital's single water investment, Seattle-based Membrion, follows directly from that. Membrion's ceramic membranes recover up to 90% of the clean water from metal-laden plating wastewater, so a fab can reuse it instead of paying to haul it away. And Lam Capital did not just write a cheque and walk off: as of November 2025 it had been piloting Membrion's system inside one of its own facilities for roughly eighteen months, then announced a formal collaboration to push the technology toward wider adoption.
Lam Capital is, in the end, a narrow but deep water investor. Across a portfolio of more than twenty deep-tech companies it has backed exactly one in water, and it backs that one the way a strategic owner does rather than a generalist, piloting the product and opening the customer it knows best, its own fabs. For a founder solving an industrial-water problem a chip plant genuinely has, that is a very different kind of money than a climate fund writing its tenth water cheque.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Lam Capital invest in?
- Lam Capital invests in deep-tech startups across the semiconductor ecosystem: AI chips, advanced packaging, materials, automation and Industry 4.0, on behalf of its parent, chip-equipment maker Lam Research. Sustainability and water are a small part of that mandate, represented by its stake in wastewater-recycling company Membrion.
- Is Lam Capital the same as Lam Research?
- Lam Capital is the corporate venture-capital arm of Lam Research, not a separate firm. Lam Research is a publicly traded semiconductor-equipment maker in Fremont, California; Lam Capital is its in-house team investing in startups. A company backed by Lam Capital is effectively backed by Lam Research.
- Does Lam Capital invest in water?
- Lam Capital has made one water investment: Membrion, a Seattle company whose ceramic membranes recover up to 90% of the clean water from the metal-laden wastewater chip factories produce. As of November 2025, Lam Research had also piloted Membrion's system in its own facility and announced a collaboration to scale it.
- Who runs Lam Capital?
- Lam Capital's investing team is led by Managing Director Kevin Chen, who oversees its deep-tech and sustainability bets and championed the Membrion deal. The team also includes Investment Directors Yvonne Lutsch, who joined from Bosch's venture arm, and Bedwyr Humphreys, who leads European deals from the UK.
- Where is Lam Capital based?
- Lam Capital is based in Fremont, California, at the headquarters of its parent Lam Research, with team members also working from Europe and India. It was established in 2016 as Lam Research's corporate venture arm and invests globally in semiconductor and deep-tech startups.