Advanced chipmaking engineer Xu Zhenpeng has left the United States to take up a full-time position at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), one of China’s leaders in artificial intelligence hardware research.
Before his return to China, Xu led a team at the California-based manufacturing start-up Atomic Semi, developing 3D printing techniques aimed at making chip production faster and cheaper than conventional methods that used bulky, multimillion-dollar machines.
Investors in the company,…

