Tim 'mithro' Ansell is the Founder of wafer.space, a Singapore-based community-oriented silicon pooling service dedicated to making custom chip fabrication affordable and accessible for engineers, startups, and researchers worldwide.

Tim studied at the University of Adelaide and spent over two decades at Google as a software engineer, where he spearheaded the release of the world's first manufacturable open-source Process Design Kit (PDK) in collaboration with SkyWater Technology Foundry.

A pioneer in open-source silicon, Tim has championed the democratization of semiconductor design, famously describing wafer.space as 'OSH Park but for custom silicon,' enabling 1,000 custom dies for just $7,000 USD.

At Google, Tim led the Open MPW program and co-released the SKY130 and GF180MCU open PDKs, and has played instrumental roles in OpenROAD, the FOSSi Foundation, and the TimVideos.us open-source hardware project.

Following the collapse of Efabless in 2025, Tim founded wafer.space to fill the void in community silicon access, launching its first GlobalFoundries GF180MCU fabrication run in October 2025 and targeting quarterly production runs through 2026.