The chip industry has a size problem. Lithography, the process used to draw circuits onto silicon wafers, relies on light. And light has limits. The further manufacturers push it, the closer they get to a physical wall called the diffraction limit. A Norwegian startup called Lace Lithography is working on a way past that wall, and investors just handed it $40 million to keep going.
Lace raised $40 million in Series A funding to develop a chipmaking tool that uses a helium atom beam instead of light to pattern silicon wafers. The round was led by Atomico and M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, with further participation from Linse Capital, SETT, Nysnø, and existing investors Vsquared Ventures, Future Ventures, and Runa Capital.
How Atom Lithography Works:
Standard chip production uses light to etch patterns into silicon. The most advanced systems today use extreme ultraviolet light, or EUV, with a wavelength of 13.5 nanometers. Lace removes light from the equation entirely. The company is developing a system that uses metastable helium atoms instead of photons to pattern semiconductor wafers. Atoms do not have a diffraction limit like photons, enabling atom-beam lithography to reach resolutions 10 times smaller than current top systems, while using less cost, energy, and complexity.
The company claims its technology can create chip features 10 times smaller than current lithography systems, with a beam width of just 0.1 nanometers compared to the 13.5nm wavelength used by ASML’s EUV scanners. To put that in plain terms, a human hair is roughly 100,000 nanometers wide. The beam Lace is working with is roughly the width of a single hydrogen atom.
The AI Algorithm That Made It Possible:
Building a smaller beam is one part of the challenge. Designing the masks that guide that beam onto silicon is another entirely. The remaining hard problem was mask design: the mathematics involved were considered effectively intractable. Lace solved it with a proprietary AI-driven algorithm that accelerates the computation by over 15 orders of magnitude.
That algorithmic breakthrough is what moves this technology from a research environment to something with industrial potential. The system integrates smoothly into existing foundry workflows with minimal infrastructure modifications. That matters because chipmakers are unlikely to adopt any technology that requires rebuilding their entire production infrastructure.
Who Is Behind Lace:
Lace was founded in July 2023 by physicist Bodil Holst and her former PhD student Adrià Salvador Palau. Holst is a Danish-Norwegian physicist who joined the University of Bergen in 2007 and built her research career around nanoscale imaging, molecular-beam lithography, and 2D materials.
CEO Bodil Holst brings a PhD from Cambridge and nearly two decades as a nanophysics professor at the University of Bergen, plus chairing the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience. CTO Adrià Salvador Palau holds dual PhDs with expertise spanning atomic physics, engineering, and AI systems. The founding team’s depth in both the physics and the software side of this problem is what made the company credible enough to attract institutional backing. Lace now employs more than 50 people across Norway, Spain, the UK, and the Netherlands, and presented its findings at the SPIE Advanced Lithography and Patterning 2026 conference last month.
Why This Funding Round Matters:
The most advanced lithography machines today cost upwards of $350 million per unit, with the next generation expected to cost significantly more. They are extraordinarily complex, energy intensive, and sourced from a single supplier. That single supplier is ASML, which holds a near-monopoly on EUV systems. Governments and large technology companies are actively looking for alternatives, partly for supply chain security and partly because export control restrictions have turned semiconductor lithography into a geopolitical issue.
John Petersen, scientific director of lithography at Imec, explained that the advantage of a helium atom beam is in its potential to create features, such as transistors, that are smaller to an almost unimaginable degree. Imec is one of the most respected semiconductor research organizations in the world, so that kind of validation carries weight in this space. The semiconductor lithography market stands at $30.44 billion in 2026 per Mordor Intelligence, and is projected to grow to $47.63 billion by 2031 at a 9.37% CAGR, driven by AI wafer starts.
What Comes Next for Lace:
The platform has developed prototype systems and aims to have a test tool in a pilot chip fabrication plant by roughly 2029. That timeline reflects how long it takes to move from lab-grade prototypes to something a real foundry can use. Post-funding, Lace is pursuing Bergen lab expansion and 15-plus hires in plasma physics, AMO physics, and cleanroom roles across Norway and Spain.
The $40 million gives Lace the runway to reach that 2029 milestone. For founders and developers building products that depend on advanced compute, atom lithography represents the direction that chipmaking is heading. The question of when, not whether, more capable chips arrive is increasingly tied to breakthroughs at exactly this level.
Lace Lithography is one of the few companies working directly on a post-EUV approach to semiconductor production. Following their technical roadmap over the next few years is worthwhile for anyone tracking where chip scaling goes next.
