Key Takeaways
- Lace Lithography, founded in 2023, has closed a €34.5 million (~$40 million) Series A round led by Atomico, bringing its total funding to over €51.7 million ($60 million)
- The Bergen, Norway-based startup uses a helium atom beam measuring just 0.1 nanometers wide, compared to ASML’s EUV beam of 13.5 nanometers, enabling chip designs up to 10 times smaller than what is currently possible
- Investors include Microsoft’s venture arm M12, Linse Capital, SETT (Spanish Society for Technological Transformation) and existing backers Vsquared Ventures, Future Ventures, and Runa Capital
- Lace aims to have a test tool inside a pilot chip fabrication facility by approximately 2029, with current operations spanning Norway, Spain, the UK, and the Netherlands
Quick Recap
In a significant moment for the global semiconductor equipment industry, Bergen-based Lace Lithography announced on March 23, 2026, a Series A funding round of €34.5 million ($40 million), as first reported by EU Startups and subsequently confirmed by Reuters. The round was led by Atomico, with participation from Microsoft’s M12, Linse Capital, SETT, Nysnø, and existing backers including Vsquared Ventures, Future Ventures, and Runa Capital. The company, founded just three years ago, has now secured over €51.7 million in total financing.
Atoms Over Light: The Technology Behind the Raise
Lace Lithography is tackling one of the hardest unsolved problems in chip production: what happens when light-based lithography simply runs out of road. The current gold standard for advanced chipmaking relies on Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) light, a technology dominated by Dutch giant ASML, whose machines now cost upwards of €380 million per unit, with the next generation expected to exceed €700 million. That singular supplier dependency, combined with extraordinary energy consumption, has created what Atomico describes as “a manufacturing bottleneck at the heart of the global economy”.
Lace’s answer is a radically different approach: instead of light, the company uses a helium atom beam for lithography, a technique categorized as Beyond-EUV (BEUV). This beam is approximately 0.1 nanometers wide, roughly the diameter of a single hydrogen atom, compared to ASML’s 13.5-nanometer EUV beam. CEO and co-founder Dr. Bodil Holst told Reuters that this precision enables chip designs “10 times as small as what is currently possible,” allowing wafer printing at what she called “ultimately atomic resolution”. Imec’s scientific director of lithography, John Petersen, reinforced this, noting the technology could enable transistor sizes at an “almost unimaginable” scale.
Co-founded in 2023 by Dr. Holst and Adrià Salvador Palau, Lace has already developed prototype systems and presented peer-reviewed research at the SPIE Lithography summit in February 2026, signaling that this is not a concept-stage pitch but a company with working science. Post-funding, the company plans to expand its Bergen laboratory and hire 15+ specialists in plasma physics, AMO physics, and cleanroom engineering across its Norway and Spain operations.
The Broader Race to Dethrone ASML
Lace is entering a market where the heat is rising fast. A clutch of well-funded startups are each staking a claim on “post-EUV” chipmaking with different technological bets, all responding to the same structural problem: AI’s insatiable demand for more compute power is colliding with the physical and economic limits of today’s EUV tooling.
In the United States, Substrate Inc. emerged from stealth in October 2025, raising $100 million at a valuation above $1 billion, backed by Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and CIA-affiliated nonprofit In-Q-Tel. Substrate’s approach uses X-ray lithography powered by a compact particle accelerator, claiming it can print features at 2nm-class resolution at a fraction of ASML’s tool cost.
On a different axis, Silicon Valley’s Multibeam Corporation raised a $31 million Series B in July 2025, led by Onto Innovation and Lam Capital, advancing its multi-column electron beam (E-Beam) lithography platform for 300mm wafers and advanced packaging applications. Multibeam already shipped its first production system to SkyWater Technology and has partnerships with Synopsys, placing it further along the commercial readiness curve.
What sets Lace apart is its unique atom-beam physics and its European institutional backing. While Substrate targets the U.S. national security-driven semiconductor narrative and Multibeam focuses on advanced packaging and near-term production use cases, Lace is positioned as the long-horizon bet, aiming to extend Moore’s Law by a decade beyond current EUV limits.
Competitive Landscape
| Feature / Metric | Lace Lithography | Multibeam Corporation | Substrate Inc. |
| Technology | Helium atom beam (BEUV) | Multi-column Electron Beam (EBL) | X-ray lithography (particle accelerator) |
| Founding Year | 2023 | ~2016 | ~2023 |
| Headquarters | Bergen, Norway | Silicon Valley, USA | San Francisco, USA |
| Latest Funding | €34.5M Series A ($40M) | $31M Series B | $100M Series A |
| Total Funding | ~€51.7M ($60M) | Undisclosed | ~$100M+ |
| Target Resolution | Atomic scale, 10x beyond current EUV | 45nm and beyond | ~2nm node |
| Pilot Tool Timeline | ~2029 | First system already shipped (2024) | Pre-commercial demos complete |
| Key Backers | Microsoft M12, Atomico | Onto Innovation, Lam Capital | Founders Fund, General Catalyst |
| Production Readiness | Prototype stage | Volume production system shipped | Demo stage, unverified at scale |
Strategic Read
Multibeam holds a clear lead in near-term commercial readiness, having already shipped a production system to SkyWater and secured industry-native investors from Lam Research and MediaTek. Lace, however, is the most technically ambitious of the three, targeting resolution limits that neither Multibeam nor Substrate currently claim, making it the strongest long-term bet on atomic-scale manufacturing if its science converts to viable fab-floor tooling by 2029.
TechnoTrenz’s Takeaway
I have been watching the “who will challenge ASML” story for a while now, and I genuinely think this Lace Lithography raise is one of the more credible signals I have seen in this space. What makes me say that is not just the check size, it is the quality of the backers. When Microsoft’s M12 and Atomico, a firm that does not chase easy trends, sit at the same cap table, that tells me serious due diligence happened before this money moved.
In my experience, the deepest long-term bets in semiconductors rarely get made by companies chasing the current node race. They get made by teams rethinking the physics entirely. That is exactly what Lace is doing. A 0.1-nanometer atom beam versus a 13.5-nanometer light beam is not an incremental improvement; it is a different category of tool. The fact that Imec, arguably the world’s most respected independent chip research institute, is collaborating with them lends this considerable credibility.
