What actually happens between the moment a server powers on and the instant your operating system boots?
In this episode of WaveSession #3, Chris Walter, co-founder of firmware engineering firm 9Elements and founder of the Open Source Firmware Foundation, pulls back the curtain on BIOS, BMC, and root-of-trust firmware, and explains why the once-closed, NDA-locked firmware industry is rapidly going open source.
Chris walks through his unconventional path into firmware, starting with a master's thesis attempting to brute-force a cryptographic algorithm using FPGA clusters, and evolving through side-channel attacks, hardware security auditing, and embedded sensor development before landing in BIOS, BMC, and root-of-trust engineering. That security-first background shapes his central thesis: firmware is the invisible foundation underneath every claim a system makes about being secure. If the boot chain is compromised, everything built on top of it, confidential computing, secure enclaves, container isolation, falls apart with it.
The conversation gets into why hyperscalers like Meta and Google, followed by mid-sized on-prem operators, are driving the shift from proprietary firmware toward open standards. Custom silicon, multi-host server designs, faster time-to-OS, and the ability to patch security vulnerabilities on your own timeline are pushing companies to demand transparency and unified firmware stacks instead of juggling incompatible vendor blobs. Chris and Ilya trace the parallels to past industry inflection points, the rise of Linux, software-defined networking, and software-defined radio, arguing that firmware is hitting its own tipping point now, compressed into years instead of decades.
Efficiency and AI take over the back half of the conversation. Chris explains how open BMC access already lets operators fine-tune fan curves and power draw at scale, and why firmware's deterministic, well-documented nature makes it surprisingly well-suited to AI-assisted development. 9Elements uses Claude extensively for automated testing and firmware workflows, even as legal NDAs around proprietary silicon limit what can be fed into LLMs in the first place. They close on the "second life" of decommissioned hyperscaler hardware, the acquisition upheaval hitting legacy firmware vendors like Phoenix and AMI, and Chris's prediction for a far more fragmented, competitive firmware ecosystem over the next decade, with AMD's OpenSIL initiative as an early proof point.
This episode covers:
- Why firmware is the invisible root of system security, and what happens when that layer is compromised
- Why 9Elements had to go open source to survive, reverse-engineering silicon behavior just to support early customers
- How open firmware gives decommissioned hyperscaler hardware a "second life" instead of becoming an unusable brick
- Why firmware's deterministic nature makes it a surprisingly strong fit for AI-assisted development, and where NDAs still limit it
- Parallels between today's firmware shift and past tipping points like Linux and software-defined networking
- Why longer hardware lifecycles, 7 to 12+ years in production, are forcing companies toward open, self-serviceable firmware
- Where the firmware industry is headed by 2030, including AMD's OpenSIL and the fallout hitting legacy vendors
- And more!
Takeaway: Firmware has quietly become the thing every other security claim depends on, and the industry that used to lock it behind NDAs is now racing, at Linux-and-SDN speed, to open it up before longer hardware lifecycles and hyperscale demands make the old model unworkable.
About the Guest
Chris Walter is the co-founder of 9Elements, a firmware engineering company specializing in open source BIOS, BMC, and root-of-trust firmware for server and embedded systems. He also co-founded the Open Source Firmware Foundation, a nonprofit umbrella organization supporting open firmware projects, and helps organize the annual Open Source Firmware Conference. Chris's background spans hardware security research, side-channel and fault-injection analysis, and embedded firmware development, giving him a security-first lens on how modern computing infrastructure boots, verifies, and protects itself.
Chapters
- 0:00 Why the Firmware Industry Is Broken
- 0:48 Meet Chris Walter of 9Elements
- 4:07 What Is Firmware?
- 7:56 Open Source Firmware Innovation
- 10:04 BIOS, BMC & Root of Trust
- 13:57 Why Nine Elements Went Open Source
- 18:24 Hyperscalers Driving Open Firmware
- 22:01 Power Efficiency & Fan Curves
- 29:11 Binary Blobs & the IP Debate
- 36:18 AI in Firmware Development
- 47:23 Giving Hardware a Second Life
- 50:34 The Future of Firmware
- 57:00 AMD's OpenSIL Initiative
- 58:48 How to Get Involved
What is WaveSession?
WaveSession is a conversation series with the people setting the direction of an open ecosystem around AI. In this show we interview the founders, researchers, builders, and capital providers making the calls on what gets built, how it scales, and who are getting sneak peeks into the future.
Each episode moves across the stack, from the chip to the grid, the software to the firmware, the language to the physics beneath it. These are the calls being made in real time, by the people making them. Each session is an honest account, where we explore beyond the superficial, not a highlight reel. The guests are testing approaches that haven't been proven yet, because building open AI infrastructure at this scale means solving problems that don't have a playbook: technical, financial, and human, all at once.
WaveSession treats this moment as what it is: a technological revolution, built in the open, with societal consequences we get into as they unfold. It invites the audience to challenge, question, and shape where it goes.