US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML

Somewhere along the line people have to realise most of the cost in chip design goes to software. So while it is nice to have some competition to ASML, it wouldn't change the cost equation as much as people expect.

And yes, ASML also have their own version using X-Ray in the pipeline.

This doesn’t seem plausible. Leading edge lithography requires you to be at (or beyond) the cutting edge in many realms - even with a breakthrough in one realm, I don’t understand how a startup could expect to catch up to ASML across the board in a few years.

Their website is light on technical details and heavy on nationalistic fluff, which does not lend much confidence.

Just a few days ago this company came up on HN as part of a substack post which pointed out the numerous warning signs that this company is likely a scam, so its crazy to see them given so much credulous reporting from mainstream media.

After persuasively demonstrating an inability to ship a fancy alarm clock even with 100MM in funding at his last startup, the founder has now decided to turn his attention to easily surmounting the decades of insane hard science and engineering that forms ASML's moat. Of course if this goes the way of the alarm clock startup there's also the fusion startup he's running that could form a fallback...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45767013

Japan has also made some strides in this area, reported here a few months ago.

"Professor Shintake aligned two axis-symmetric mirrors in a straight line and used a total of only four mirrors instead of ten.

"Because highly absorbent EUV light weakens by 40% with each reflection, only about 1% of the energy from the light source reaches the wafer when bounced off ten mirrors while more than 10% does when only four mirrors are used."

https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/japan-on-edge-of-euv-lithograp...

Edit: "Substrate said that it has developed a version of lithography that uses X-ray light."

> If you show revenue, people will ask 'HOW MUCH?' and it will never be enough. The company that was the 100xer, the 1000xer is suddenly the 2x dog. But if you have NO revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue! You're a potential pure play... It's not about how much you earn, it's about how much you're worth. And who is worth the most? Companies that lose money!