The Trump administration has agreed to take a stake in xLight - a startup seeking to develop free-electron lasers viewed as key to making faster computing chips.
The U.S. Department of Commerce said on Monday the government will inject up to $150 million into the company but did not disclose the size of the stake.
The department’s CHIPS Research and Development Office said that it has signed a non-binding preliminary letter of intent to provide U.S. government incentives. This marks the office’s first investment after the Trump administration took over a $7.4 billion Biden-era semiconductor research institute.
In the world of advanced chip manufacturing, the most critical tool is an extreme ultra-violet lithography machine that prints the pattern of chips onto silicon wafers. The Netherlands’ ASML
is currently the only company in the world that makes such a machine, though startups such as Substrate are trying to develop rivals.
