xLight, the American company building the world’s most powerful lasers, today announced the signing of a final award of $150 million in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). These incentives will directly support the construction and demonstration of the company’s first free-electron laser (FEL), which will fundamentally transform how extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) light is delivered to semiconductor fabs.

“Lithography innovation is the key to reviving Moore’s Law,” said Nicholas Kelez, CEO and CTO of xLight. “With these incentives, the support from Commerce, and growing partnerships across the semiconductor ecosystem, xLight will deliver an EUV light source capable of powering lithography innovation for decades.”

The semiconductor industry is heading toward a crisis: in a few short years, the demand for advanced chips will be 2x greater than the global manufacturing capacity. At the same time, the cost of making each generation of chips keeps rising. xLight helps unlock manufacturing capacity and drive down cost by transforming how light is delivered to the fab: from an individual tool feature to a utility-scale service.

xLight’s FEL systems are built outside the fab and deliver significantly more power to up to 16 scanners at once. In the short-term, xLight systems will unlock massive productivity for existing fabs, enabling them to produce more chips, at better quality and lower cost.

In the long-term, xLight systems enable the chips of the future — by partnering with leaders across the semiconductor ecosystem, the unique characteristics of our light make entirely new classes of chips possible. Thanks to the support of Commerce, xLight is building the platform for the next era of semiconductor manufacturing, starting with our first-of-its-kind system in Albany, New York.

About xLight

xLight was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. The company’s mission is to commercialize free electron lasers (FEL) for critical US economic and national security applications. xLight is led by a group of technologists and semiconductor industry veterans with a long track record of building complex technical systems. Our team has decades of experience designing, building, and deploying FEL across a wide range of applications, from research and development to national security missions. Learn more at www.xlight.com