In a Mountain View facility, a team of three engineers is attempting to build a new kind of machine tool for the most advanced industry on the planet. Their target is the semiconductor fab, and their wedge is a promise of order-of-magnitude cost reduction. Atum Works, a 2024 deeptech startup, is developing what it calls a gigascale 3D nano-printer, a device designed to fabricate arbitrary 3D metal structures with submicron resolution. The company claims its approach could achieve this at one-tenth the cost of traditional 2D lithography [Y Combinator, Spring 2025].
The 3D Wedge into a $500 Billion Industry
The bet rests on moving beyond the flat plane. Modern chipmaking is a subtractive, 2D process; patterns are etched away. Atum Works is proposing an additive, 3D one, building up intricate metal geometries layer by layer. The initial application is focused on creating the advanced interconnects, passive components, and future devices like micro-inductors or antennas that sit on or within a chip package. If a tool can produce necessary, high-resolution 3D features at a 90% cost reduction versus existing lithography systems, it creates a clear economic wedge [Y Combinator, Spring 2025].
A Team Built for Deep Physics
The founders, all in their mid-twenties, bring a specific pedigree to this physics-heavy problem. Matteo Kimura, Lucas Pabarcius, and Malcolm Tisdale are Caltech and NASA-trained engineers whose work has already drawn recognition. All three were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Science for 2025 for their work on nanoscale 3D printing for microchips [Forbes, 2025]. Tisdale, a Caltech mechanical engineering graduate, co-founded the university's rocketry club, Caltech Air and Outer Space (CAOS), and developed robotic grippers under Professor Joel Burdick [No Cap Blog]. The team's prior projects have won NASA awards for "Most Visionary Concept" and "Best Product Development" [Y Combinator, Spring 2025].
| Founder | Role & Background |
|---|---|
| Matteo Kimura | Co-founder, Caltech/NASA engineer |
| Lucas Pabarcius | Co-founder, Caltech/NASA engineer |
| Malcolm Tisdale | Co-founder, Caltech Mechanical Engineering ('24) |
Traction, Risk, and the Road to 2025
Atum Works has built its first 3D nano-printer prototype and established its manufacturing facility in Mountain View [Y Combinator, Spring 2025]. More critically, it reports having secured letters of intent (LOIs) for co-development, including one with NVIDIA [Y Combinator, Spring 2025]. The company participated in Y Combinator's Spring 2025 batch [Y Combinator, Spring 2025]. The stated plan is to sell its first products before the end of 2025 [Y Combinator, Spring 2025].
The path from prototype to product in a semiconductor toolchain is among the hardest in technology. The risks include process qualification, incumbent inertia from giants like ASML and Applied Materials, and the capital-intensive nature of scaling semiconductor equipment. Atum Works is targeting the process integration teams within semiconductor giants and major fabless design houses, the groups tasked with evaluating novel equipment that could provide a competitive edge.