Intel Capital President Says Hardware Is Hot

Intel Capital President Arvind Sodhani said Monday that he believes the venture-backed tech may be overvalued —but that among current ventures, hardware startups are some of the most accurately priced.

“We are going to need a lot of hardware companies if many of the disruptions and innovations that we are seeing today fulfill their promise, such as driverless cars and drones,” Sodhani said, according to Silicon Valley Business Journal reporter Cromwell Schubarth. “I think hardware companies are going to make a comeback and I think those companies are pretty well priced right now.”

Sodhani and Silicon Valley Bank CEO Greg Becker, whose bank estimates that it serves about 65% of startups in the area, talked at length about the state of venture capital, and whether the industry might be in a bubble, during a Churchill Club appearance yesterday.

In software, Sodhani said, there’s an insidious urge to become the next explosively popular platform, instead of focusing on building a stable product.

“There’s a lot of capital trying to find the next Facebook but we all know that there are only likely to be a half dozen Facebooks in the next decade or so,” Sodhani said. “But the result is that everybody is chasing that big return and think they have found the next big, big win. I think that is dangerous.”