The US Department of Commerce just handed SandboxAQ, a company that spun out of Google’s parent Alphabet in 2022, a $500 million research and development grant to find new materials for making semiconductors. The funding comes from the CHIPS Act, which Congress passed in 2022 to rebuild America’s chipmaking infrastructure.
Here’s the thing: this isn’t about building another chip factory. It’s about solving a quieter, arguably more important problem. The chemicals and raw materials that go into semiconductor manufacturing are themselves a chokepoint, and many of them flow through supply chains that run directly through China.
What SandboxAQ actually does
SandboxAQ isn’t a typical chipmaker or even a typical AI company. The Palo Alto-based firm specializes in what it calls physics-based AI, combining machine learning with the laws of physics to solve problems that pure software approaches struggle with.
Its flagship tool for this project is a platform called AQCat, which screens potential catalyst candidates for chemical and materials processes. The speed advantage is not subtle. AQCat can evaluate candidates approximately 20,000 times faster than traditional lab methods.
