By using atoms instead of light, Lace provides chip manufacturers with a roadmap for future transistor shrinking that supports the requirements of the AI era and beyond

(PRESS RELEASE) Bergen, Norway 23rd of March — Lace Lithography, the company developing breakthrough atom-beam lithography technology for next-generation microchips and semiconductors, today announced a $40 million Series A funding round led by Atomico, with participation from M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, Linse Capital, SETT, and Nysnø, alongside existing investors Vsquared Ventures, Future Ventures, Runa Capital, and Deep Future Ventures. This brings the company’s total funding to over $60 million in just two years.

Lace is reinventing the fundamentals of chipmaking with a new patterning technology designed for the next century of AI and compute demand. By using atoms instead of light, Lace bypasses the physical, economic, and energy limitations that increasingly constrain today’s leading-edge lithography systems.

Reimagining Lithography for the next 100 years

Global demand for computing power, driven by AI, cloud infrastructure, and edge devices, is growing exponentially. But the lithography technologies that are at the core of semiconductor manufacturing are reaching their limits.

Today, the most advanced chips are made using technology relying on ultraviolet light. However, these lithography systems are: extremely expensive, creating major barriers for new or expanding fabs, very energy-intensive, relying on complex optics and plasma light sources and supply constrained, slowing global chip capacity growth.

“As the world races toward more advanced computing, traditional lithography can no longer keep up,” said Bodil Holst Co-founder and CEO . “Lace offers a fundamentally new path forward. Our goal is not to replace the foundry workflow, but to supercharge and augment it. By employing atom-beam lithography, we not only enable chipmakers to continue scaling performance for decades to come, but also significantly lower the barrier for the entire industry”

A Breakthrough: Atom-Beam Lithography

Instead of relying on photons, Lace has developed a revolutionary platform that uses a helium atom beam. The technology is going to enable patterning of features at the atomic scale, 10x+ smaller than today, thereby completely removing physical limitations of existing lithography techniques. Crucially, Lace is compatible with existing foundry workflows, and will provide a genuine drop-in solution with compact and fab-friendly hardware with no demanding installation requirements.

Lace is also the first company to solve the atom-mask design challenge, using a proprietary AI-driven inverse lithography (ILT) algorithm.

By leveraging AI techniques to accelerate computation by over 15 orders of magnitude, Lace has solved the previously intractable problem of diffractive atom mask design, unlocking the ability to manufacture precise patterns down to the atomic scale.

“Lace represents a step change in semiconductor manufacturing, and we are convinced this is how chips from GPUs to qubits and beyond will be built over the coming decades,” said Sasha Vidiborskiy, Partner at Atomico. “It’s one of those rare moments where a single technological shift has the potential to extend Moore’s Law into entirely new territory and unlock an unprecedented level of computational power.”

"Lace has developed a breakthrough approach to patterning, which will enable foundries to design and fabricate ultra-dense 3D chips with larger die sizes than ever before,” said Michael Stewart, Managing Partner at M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund. “Their technique leverages atomic beams and advanced computation in the mask synthesis process, which aligns with our view that deeper AI software and systems co-design will be required to advance development of efficient AI computation, and a key theme of the near future."

World-Class Team, Deep Scientific Foundations

Lace’s co-founders, Bodil Holst and Adrià Salvador Palau, bring a rare combination of expertise spanning atomic beam physics, instrumentation engineering, and advanced AI.

The company is headquartered in Bergen, Norway with offices in Barcelona, York and Eindhoven

About Lace

Lace is building the patterning technology that will power the next 100 years of semiconductor manufacturing. Using atom-beam lithography and proprietary AI-driven mask design, Lace unlocks atomic-scale patterning at dramatically lower cost, energy usage, and system complexity. The company is headquartered in Europe and collaborates with leading global semiconductor research institutions such as IMEC and manufacturing partners.

About Atomico

Atomico is the founder-built European venture capital firm. We partner with the most ambitious entrepreneurs using technology to rewire the world, better. Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström launched Atomico in 2006 with the belief that entrepreneurs are the ultimate gamechangers for positive transformation across the most critical aspects of our society and economy.

Starting in Europe, the firm’s mission is to further its global progress, with a platform offering unmatched support from the early stage to scale. Some of Europe’s most ambitious founders have partnered with Atomico, including Aiven, Bird, DeepL, Hinge Health, Klarna, Neko Health, Pipedrive, Stripe, Supercell, TravelPerk and Wellhub.