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, the multi-billion-dollar process currently used to etch circuits onto silicon wafers [Y Combinator, Spring 2025]. For an industry perpetually chasing the next scaling law, the proposition is as simple as it is audacious: add a third dimension to chip manufacturing, and do it for less.
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 vanishingly small layer. This isn't about printing entire logic chips from scratch today. The initial application is more focused: creating the advanced interconnects, passive components, and future devices like micro-inductors or antennas that sit on or within a chip package. These are the structures that could enable continued performance gains as transistor scaling slows. The value proposition is pure procurement logic. 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, even if it only addresses a portion of the total fabrication flow [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," a signal of their experience navigating the rigor of government-grade engineering challenges [Y Combinator, Spring 2025]. This background is their first line of defense against the immense technical risk. They are not software founders pivoting to hardware; they are systems engineers from an institution famous for its work on JPL rovers, now training that mindset on nanomanufacturing.
| Founder | Role & Background | Notable Recognition |
|---|---|---|
| Matteo Kimura | Co-founder, Caltech/NASA engineer | Forbes 30 Under 30 Science (2025) [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 2025] |
| Lucas Pabarcius | Co-founder, Caltech/NASA engineer | Forbes 30 Under 30 Science (2025) [Forbes, 2025] |
| Malcolm Tisdale | Co-founder, Caltech Mechanical Engineering ('24), CAOS co-founder | Forbes 30 Under 30 Science (2025) [Forbes, 2025] |
Traction, Risk, and the Road to 2025
For a company this early, the traction signals are carefully chosen. 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]. An LOI from a leader in AI hardware is a powerful validator, suggesting a potential path to a design-win with a demanding, forward-looking customer. The company participated in Y Combinator's Spring 2025 batch, giving it the program's standard seed funding and network access, with Garry Tan listed as the primary partner [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, however, is among the hardest in technology. The risks are not subtle.
- Process qualification. Every new tool must be qualified for high-volume manufacturing, a years-long, grueling process of proving yield, reliability, and repeatability to nanometer tolerances.
- Incumbent inertia. The industry's tooling ecosystem, dominated by companies like ASML, Applied Materials, and Lam Research, is built on decades of integration and trust. Displacing even a niche requires more than a cost advantage.
- The funding gauntlet. Scaling hardware, especially semiconductor capital equipment, is extraordinarily capital intensive. The undisclosed seed round from YC is a start, but the next financing steps will need to be orders of magnitude larger.
The realistic customer here is not a startup. 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 in packaging or specialized component fabrication. They are not selling to a cost center, but to an R&D function with a budget for high-risk, high-reward bets. The competitive set is bifurcated. On one side are the lithography incumbents, for whom 3D printing is a potential cannibalization. On the other are academic and early-stage research efforts exploring similar additive techniques, none of which have yet commercialized a gigascale production tool. Atum Works' bet is that its team's applied physics rigor and early commercial engagement can bridge that gap first.
Sources
- [Y Combinator, Spring 2025] Atum Works: Gigascale Nanomanufacturing | https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/atum-works
- [Forbes, 2025] 30 Under 30 Science 2026: New Discoveries From The Cosmos To The Nanoscale | https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2025/12/02/30-under-30-science-2026-new-discoveries-from-the-stars-to-the-nanoscale/
- [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 2025] All the Texans who made the 2025 Forbes 30 under 30 list | https://www.star-telegram.com/news/business/fort-worth/article313515441.html
- [No Cap Blog] Malcolm Tisdale - No Cap Blog | https://nocap.blog/founder/malcolm-tisdale/