Multibeam Raises $31M to Expand E-Beam Lithography Platform

Multibeam Corp. has secured $31 million in Series B funding to accelerate the global deployment of its multi-column E-Beam Lithography (EBL) platform, aimed at next-generation semiconductor manufacturing.

The oversubscribed round includes support from Onto Innovation Inc. (NYSE: ONTO), experts in process control solutions for advanced nodes and advanced packaging, and Lam Capital, the venture capital arm of Lam Research Corp. (NASDAQ: LRCX), a global provider of semiconductor wafer fabrication equipment and services. Additional participants included UMC Capital, the venture capital arm of UMC Corp. (NYSE: UMC), and MediaTek Capital, the venture capital arm of MediaTek Inc. (TWSE: 2454.TW). Several leading financial and corporate investors also contributed to the round, alongside existing investors.

The company reports that the funds will be used to accelerate development of Multibeam’s next-generation multi-column EBL platform for 300mm wafer and panel-level maskless lithography equipment. Portions of the capital will also support silicon innovation R&D to meet the growing demands for lower-energy, higher-performance applications in artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies. These fields increasingly require advanced semiconductor packaging and integration, along with faster development and time-to-market for new chip technologies and designs.

Multibeam’s production-grade platform offers full-wafer or panel-level field of view, exceptional depth of focus (DoF), and flexible, maskless writing capabilities. It also enables the creation of unique patterns for emerging technologies such as photonics, quantum computing, MEMS, compound semiconductors, and power devices.

Multibeam’s production systems are already in use, addressing key challenges for semiconductor manufacturers seeking alternatives to traditional optical lithography. With increasing demand for cost-effective, high-productivity patterning, the company’s extendible EBL architecture is positioned to support a range of new applications requiring precision and scalability.

This round of investors reflects the broad support Multibeam has drawn from across the silicon ecosystem, building upon its existing partnerships with companies such as Synopsys. Since shipping its first EBL production system last year, interest from global semiconductor manufacturers has surged for emerging applications uniquely enabled by high-productivity, electron beam-based patterning solutions. With its differentiated innovations, extendible platform strategy, and expert technology team, Multibeam is well positioned to meet that demand.

Multibeam Founder and Chairman, Dr. David K. Lam, commented: “We are excited to welcome our new investors. In addition to funding, they bring experience, insight and wisdom acquired from decades of developing breakthrough technologies that advanced the global semiconductor industry. We are grateful for their confidence in our business, product and market strategies, and we value their contribution to our next phase of growth.”

Michael Plisinski, CEO of Onto Innovation, added: “For the last decade, advances in packaging have ushered in new eras for semiconductors. First, the adoption of copper pillar and fan-out packaging helped power the mobile era and now chiplet architectures are powering the AI era. Future innovation lies in advanced packaging solutions. For packaging with interconnects below 1µm, we see enormous potential for Multibeam’s direct-write lithography technology to enable denser interconnects between chips cost-effectively. Multibeam has taken a novel lithography technology from concept to mass production to address the growing need for advanced integration of chips on large substrates. As such, we are very pleased to lead this Series B investment round.”

Audrey Charles, Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Advanced Packaging at Lam Research and President of Lam Capital, stated: “Heterogeneous chip-to-chip integration is essential for delivering the lower power, higher performance semiconductors needed to meet the rapidly escalating demands of AI compute. Multibeam, with its disruptive, innovative miniaturized design, has developed an e-beam lithography system that has the potential to deliver unparalleled patterning flexibility for emerging chiplet applications at the wafer scale and beyond.”

Kris Peng, President of UMC Capital, noted: “Multibeam has developed a highly flexible lithography tool capable of patterning fine features across full wafers. This new type of direct-wafer writing system with high resolution, large depth of focus, and wafer-scale field of view opens the aperture on the type of chips that can be made.”

Brian Hsu, Partner at MediaTek Capital, added: “Multibeam’s system enables rapid time to prototype and time to market. These new capabilities enable agile development of a wide variety of novel and diverse applications.”

About Multibeam
Multibeam helps semiconductor leaders accelerate chip innovation with the industry’s first Multicolumn E-Beam Lithography (MEBL) system built for volume production. The technology provides large field of view, deep depth of focus, and the ability to write unique patterns without masks. Applications include rapid prototyping, advanced packaging, chip ID, heterogeneous integration, compound semiconductors, photonics, MEMS, and more. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and led by a team of experts in semiconductor equipment and patterning technology.  For more information, please click here. 

Source/Photo Credit: Multibeam Corp.

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