Mojo Vision CEO Nikhil Balram Honored with 2026 HardTech Award for Foundational Innovation in Semiconductors and Advanced Computing

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 14, 2026--

Mojo Vision, the high-performance micro-LED platform company, today announced that CEO Dr. Nikhil Balram has been recognized with a 2026 HardTech Award for his decades of contribution to semiconductor innovation, advanced computing, and breakthrough hardware platforms. Dr. Balram was ranked as the top honoree among the 20 recipients of the 2026 HardTech Awards. The HardTech Awards recognize the people who have launched intelligent and connected devices at scale. Founded by MistyWest, The HardTech Awards foster collaboration, elevate breakthrough work, and drive industry impact – rapidly becoming one of the largest platforms dedicated to commercialized hardware innovation. Learn more at The HardTech Awards.

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Dr. Balram’s career spans multiple generations of differentiated technology, from video processing architectures that have shipped in hundreds of millions of consumer electronic devices to pioneering micro-LED displays and massively parallel optical interconnects for AI infrastructure.

The recognition reflects not only Dr. Balram’s leadership but the work of the entire Mojo Vision team in building a highly differentiated semiconductor platform spanning advanced micro-LEDs, quantum dots, optics, semiconductor integration, and system design.

“Hard technology innovation is never the work of one person,” said Dr. Balram. “This recognition belongs to the incredibly talented team at Mojo Vision that has spent years solving hard technical problems, rethinking conventional architectures, and building an advanced technology platform for the future of displays and AI infrastructure.”

“Few leaders combine deep technical vision with the ability to turn ambitious ideas into real-world products the way Nikhil does,” said Dr. Achin Bhowmik, Mojo Vision board member, chief technology officer, and executive vice president of engineering at Starkey, and former Intel executive. “From consumer electronics to next-generation computing, his work has consistently pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, and this recognition is well deserved.”

“Nikhil’s work reflects the kind of interdisciplinary innovation that creates entirely new possibilities,” said Dr. Moungi Bawendi, Mojo Vision advisory board member, recipient of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “What Nikhil and the team at Mojo Vision have built brings together semiconductor engineering, materials science, optics, and systems design in a remarkable way. This award recognizes both visionary leadership and exceptional technical execution.”

Under Dr. Balram’s leadership, the Mojo Vision team has built a unique semiconductor platform that combines advanced materials, optics, silicon integration, and software to address some of the most important challenges in next-generation displays and AI infrastructure.

For more information about Mojo Vision, visit mojo.vision

About Mojo Vision

Mojo Vision is pioneering a highly flexible, wafers-in, wafers-out micro-LED platform to unlock AI applications across multiple high-growth markets. Built over a decade by a team of skilled engineers, the company has developed a powerful technology toolkit – including advanced 300mm silicon architecture, tiny GaN-on-silicon micro-LED emitters, efficient photodetectors, proprietary quantum dots, custom micro-lens arrays, multicore fiber bundles, and proprietary software – that can be configured in custom ways depending on the application. Our scalable, manufacturing-ready platform resolves conventional trade-offs in size, brightness, bandwidth density, and power, enabling breakthrough products such as next-generation AI glasses and massively parallel optical interconnects for AI infrastructure.

Top 20 winners of the 2026 HardTech Awards

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is rising toward more records Thursday after Cisco Systems and others joined the parade of U.S. companies reporting fatter profits for the start of 2026 than analysts expected.

The S&P 500 added 0.3% to its all-time high set the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 290 points, or 0.6%, and could finish a day above the 50,000 level for the first time since before the war with Iran began. The Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher and adding to its own record, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time.

Cisco Systems helped lead the market after jumping 16.9%. The tech giant reported better profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and CEO Chuck Robbins said it saw “very strong, broad-based demand for our products.” Big Tech behemoths in particular are pouring cash into artificial-intelligence technology.

Also rallying due to better-than-expected profit reports were StubHub Holdings, up 15.1%, and Fossil Group, up 9.8%,. Both sell products that aren’t day-to-day essentials, such as concert tickets and watches. Strong results from them could be an indicator that customers are still willing to spend despite sour readings on consumer confidence.

Whether consumers will keep spending is a big question for Wall Street, as pressures rise on U.S. households because of high oil prices and inflation created by the Iran war. A report released Thursday said that shoppers overall spent less at U.S. retailers last month than economists expected. But the deceleration after factoring out gasoline and automobile sales wasn’t quite as bad as economists thought it would be.

A separate report, meanwhile, said more U.S. workers filed for unemployment benefits last week, which could be an indication of more layoffs.

Treasury yields zigzagged in the bond market following the reports, but they largely remained lower for the day. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.44% from 4.46% late Wednesday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.

Stocks were nearly flat in Hong Kong and down 1.5% in Shanghai as Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing.

Some investors hope Trump could encourage Xi to use China’s close economic ties with Iran to get it to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The strait’s closure because of the war has kept oil tankers pent up in the Persian Gulf instead of delivering crude to customers worldwide.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, fell 0.7% to $104.86 Thursday, but it remains well above its price of roughly $70 from before the war.

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Trader Michael Capolino works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Patrick Casey works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Thursday, May 14, 2026. (Maxim Shemetov/Pool Photo via AP)

Asia markets index of Japan, South Korea and Australia is seen on a screen at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, May 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)