Atum Works recently launched!

Launch YC: Atum Works: The Next Dimension of Compute
"Atum Works is building 3D ASML."
TL;DR Atum Works is 3D printing the 3D devices of the future for 1/10th the cost of today’s 2D lithography.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n0Di5sLCjo&feature=youtu.be

Founded by Lucas Pabarcius, Malcolm Tisdale & Matteo Kimura

Team

Atum Works is a team of physicists and systems engineers from Caltech and NASA, where they previously matured multiple nascent technologies, winning NASA’s Most Visionary Concept and Best Product Development awards.

Advisory Board

Dr. Philip Wong: Chief Scientist, TSMC.

Dr. Eli Yablonovitch: Director Emeritus of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S).

Dr. Julia Greer: Director, Caltech Kavli Nanoscience Institute.
 


Dr. Michael Hochberg: Silicon Photonics Pioneer.

Dr. Pooya Tadayon: Intel Fellow.

Problem

“For the past 50 years, semiconductor-technology development has felt like walking inside a tunnel. The road ahead was clear, as there was a well-defined path. And everyone knew what needed to be done: shrink the transistor. Now, we have reached the end of the tunnel." Philip Wong, Chief Scientist, TSMC, 2024.

Today’s 2D lithography has hit a fundamental wall in feature density, so the semiconductor industry has begun stacking 2D layers to fit more transistors, bits, and bandwidth on each chip.

But stacking scales cost exponentially with density, unlike the constant cost days of Moore: a 10-layer high bandwidth memory (HBM) package is ~5x more expensive than the same amount of un-stacked DRAM.

Solution

Using a 3D process to make today's increasingly 3D integrated circuits could shortcut this problem, scaling process complexity with materials rather than layers and enabling the next decade of continued progress.

Atum Works 3D lithography technology can do this: it is capable of fabricating multi-material 3D structures with 100 nm resolution at wafer scale.

Where the ability to create more complex forms enables more complex functions, such granular control of matter enables the future of much more than just chips, including biotech, sensing, and advanced materials.

The Atum Works team recently crossed the cost thresholds that make this technology commercially viable. They are currently in conversation with customers, and will be driving an exponential scaling law in the production capacity of this technology over the coming decade.

What Atum Works has achieved so far

  • Set up the Atum Works manufacturing facility and lab in Mountain View, CA.
  • Built their first 3D nano-printer.
  • Acquired their first customers, including an LOI for co-development with NVIDIA.

What’s next

  • Sell their first products (this year).
  • Exponentially scale production volume.
  • SECRET.

Learn More

🌐 Visit atum.works to learn more.
🧠 Join the Atum Works team! If you are, or know any world-class applied physicists, material scientists, chemists, systems engineers, please get in touch!
🤝  Become an Atum Works customer! If you or someone you know needs something unfathomably complex fabricated with a 100 nm minimum feature size, please get in touch!
👣 Follow Atum Works on LinkedIn.

Posted 
April 25, 2025
 in 
Launch
 category
← Back to all posts  

Join Our Newsletter and Get the Latest
Posts to Your Inbox

No spam ever. Read our Privacy Policy
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.