THE TEAM

Engineers who lived the problem.

Wafercadence is a four-person team: a process integration engineer who founded the company, a yield engineering specialist who built the spatial pattern methodology, a SECS/GEM infrastructure architect, and an inspection data scientist. We are not a software company that learned about fabs. We are a fab team that built software.

37
Years combined fab & OSAT engineering experience
14nm
and below process node expertise
2024
Founded in San Jose, CA
TEAM MEMBERS

The yield engineering team.

Kenji Nakamura, CEO of Wafercadence
Kenji Nakamura
CEO

13 years as a process integration engineer across logic and DRAM memory nodes, running D0 reduction programs at 28nm and 14nm. Founded Wafercadence in 2024 after observing that every fab he worked in had the same problem: all the data to catch an excursion in 12 minutes existed — uncorrelated — across three different systems.

Priya Sundaram, Head of Yield Engineering at Wafercadence
Priya Sundaram
Head of Yield Engineering

10 years in fab process integration, with hands-on responsibility for in-line defect density reduction at 28nm and 16nm logic nodes. Built the internal defect clustering methodology that became the basis for the Wafercadence spatial pattern classifier. Leads all yield engineering customer deployments.

Marcus Chen, Platform Engineering Lead at Wafercadence
Marcus Chen
Platform Engineering Lead

SECS/GEM and MES integration specialist with 8 years building on-premise data infrastructure at a 300mm logic foundry, including SECS-II/HSMS connector development and lot traveler schema work. Architect of the Wafercadence ingest layer and all MES connector implementations.

Elena Vasquez, Data Science Lead at Wafercadence
Elena Vasquez
Data Science Lead

Computational scientist with 6 years applying image classification methods to semiconductor inspection data. Designed and trained the CNN-based spatial pattern classifier for the Wafercadence wafer map module — achieving 97.3% defect pattern classification accuracy at 14nm and below. Leads all model validation and release qualification.

FOUNDING PRINCIPLES

What we believe about yield engineering.

These are the three things we built Wafercadence to not compromise on. They also describe what we are not building: a generic manufacturing analytics dashboard, a cloud-based quality system, or a tool that requires a 12-month change control process to deploy.

01

Speed of evidence, not speed of alerts.

An alert at 12 minutes only helps if it comes with an evidence package. We deliver both: the signal and the attribution, before the next lot enters the module.

02

Fabs don't change what's working.

Your inspection tools, your MES, your SPC charts — they're not going anywhere. We connect to what exists, not replace it. SECS/GEM and file-drop, no change control required.

03

Your wafer data never leaves your facility.

On-premise deployment. Air-gapped option available. No telemetry to external endpoints. Your process data stays inside your firewall — we designed it that way from day one.

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