News: LEDs
18 May 2026
Mojo Vision’s CEO Nikhil Balram honored with HardTech Award
Mojo Vision Inc of Cupertino, CA, USA — which is pioneering a wafers-in, wafers-out micro-LED platform designed to enable AI applications — says 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. Balram was ranked as the top honoree among the 20 recipients of the 2026 HardTech Awards.
Founded by MistyWest, the HardTech Awards recognize the people who have launched intelligent and connected devices at scale, aiming to foster collaboration, elevate breakthrough work, and drive industry impact.
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 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.
“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,” says Balram.
“Few leaders combine deep technical vision with the ability to turn ambitious ideas into real-world products the way Nikhil does,” comments Dr Achin Bhowmik, Mojo Vision board member, chief technology officer and executive VP 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,” he adds.
“Nikhil’s work reflects the kind of interdisciplinary innovation that creates entirely new possibilities,” comments 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 Balram’s leadership, the Mojo Vision team has built a unique semiconductor platform that combines advanced materials, optics, silicon integration, and software to address key challenges in next-generation displays and AI infrastructure.
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