Back in 2019, Diana Gamzina presented her powerful amplifiers at a space agency. The feedback was direct: At about $1 million per device, they were just too expensive for real-world infrastructure. It was a hard truth, but instead of giving up, she doubled down.

One year later, Gamzina launched Elve, a Davis-based startup to manufacture high-performance amplifiers that customers could also afford and buy at scale. The goal of the company is to serve as a “middle mile,” she says, filling in the connectivity gaps beyond densely populated areas.

“The minute you step out of the city, or drive from one city to another, you’ll have a very bad connection,” says Gamzina, who was a staff scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and a development engineer at the UC Davis millimeter-wave research group. “It becomes very obvious that rural populations are not that well connected.”

Elve effectively enables fiber-quality connections over the air, leveraging space networks to boost connectivity. For instance, say you’re in the middle of nowhere. Your phone connects to a satellite, but that satellite still needs a station on the ground to complete the link. This is where Elve’s millimeter wave amplifiers come in. Think of them as high-powered Wi-Fi extenders, but on a global scale.

These TWT amplifiers boost signals over a wide range of millimeter wave frequencies with a dedicated power supply. Through advanced materials and manufacturing technologies, Elve found a way to produce these types of “vacuum electronic devices” at large quantities for lower costs than ever before.

Due to the uniqueness of the technology, it didn’t take PR Yu, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur living in Silicon Valley, long to decide to invest in Elve. As CEO and managing partner of Yu Galaxy in Palo Alto, he came across the startup through another one of his portfolio companies and became Elve’s first investor.

“They’re working on something very hard to do, but very important for society,” he says. “It was so unique that I knew not many other investors would understand.”

His two VC firms combined have invested in almost 100 companies in the U.S. across different industries. The Yu Galaxy process is similar, in that he usually makes a decision after a few meetings with the founder or founders. When he met with Gamzina, he says, Elve didn’t have a functional prototype yet. But he believed in her vision and the company, a FourthWave accelerator program alumni, is progressing well. (In 2024, Elve secured $15 million in a Series A round to expand.)

The factory in Davis became fully operational last year and has already started shipping amplifiers. Leading a team of 36 people (as of February), she emphasizes creating a positive culture through team-building games and growth mindset practices.

“It was obvious they were high achievers in the sense that they have been developing related technologies and contributing to the science community and society,” Yu says. “The founder even has co-founded a nonprofit to help young students get more exposure in STEM. The team has good business sense, which is important for successful entrepreneurs. Technical understanding alone is not sufficient.”

Gamzina, who earned her PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering from UC Davis, points out that the real innovation is the cost. The actual amplifiers — the technology behind them — have been demonstrated before by herself and others. But making them at an affordable price is where Elve has truly excelled.

“There was a lot of disbelief,” Gamzina says. “We’re only now, within the last year, getting to the point where even our own community that understands the technology is like, ‘Wow, you’ve solved a problem of the last three decades that everybody wanted to do but nobody could figure out how.’”

And in the future, she adds, the rise of the Internet of Things will only increase the value of advanced connectivity.

“So now items that are surrounding you are also hogging bandwidth,” she says. “It’s not just the ‘who’ that wants to be connected, but your car is connected and your fridge is connected. That’s just in the household. Factories are going in that direction too. The more automation and augmented reality there is in our lives, the more connectivity is needed.”

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