Norway’s Lace Lithography Raises €34.5M Funding In Series A Round

The round was led by Atomico, with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), Linse Capital, SETT, and Nysnø, alongside existing investors Vsquared Ventures, Future Ventures, and Runa Capital. Since its founding two years ago, Lace Lithography has now raised over €51.7 million ($60 million) in total funding.

Founded in 2023 by Dr. Holst and Adrià Salvador Palau, Lace Lithography develops BEUV (Beyond-EUV) atom lithography systems designed to drive the quantum future at industrial scale. By using atoms instead of light, the company aims to extend Moore’s Law by another decade beyond current semiconductor technology.

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Lace Lithography addresses the limitations of traditional chipmaking by completely eliminating light. The company is developing next-generation lithography technology that uses metastable helium atoms instead of photons to pattern semiconductor wafers.

Unlike light atoms have no diffraction limit allowing atom beam lithography to achieve feature resolutions up to ten times smaller than current leading systems. This approach also reduces cost energy use and complexity. Lace’s technology is designed to integrate seamlessly into existing semiconductor foundry workflows with minimal infrastructure modifications.

“As the world races toward more advanced computing, traditional lithography can no longer keep up. Lace offers a fundamentally new path forward. Our goal is not to replace the foundry workflow, but to supercharge and augment it,” said Dr Bodil Holst, CEO and co-founder of Lace Lithography.

Explaining the problem the company is solving, Atomico mentioned in a blog post, “Chips run the world. And making them keeps getting harder. The most advanced lithography machines today cost upwards of €380 million per unit, with the next generation expected to exceed €700 million. They are extraordinarily complex, energy intensive, and sourced from a single supplier. The result is a manufacturing bottleneck at the heart of the global economy, arriving at exactly the moment AI is driving an unprecedented surge in demand for compute. The industry has known this is coming but previously nobody has had a credible answer.”