Scaling chips down to their physical limits 15x faster.

Inversion Semiconductor is a Y Combinator–backed startup founded in 2024 by Rohan Karthik and Daniel Vega, headquartered in San Francisco. Their mission is to revolutionize chip fabrication by building next-generation lithography machines powered by compact, tabletop particle accelerators, ultimately shrinking traditional accelerators by 1,000× and producing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light 15× faster than existing systems. They’ve already set up a mini laser lab in YC’s office and initiated collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s BELLA accelerator team under the BELLA‑LUX project

There's a critical bottleneck in semiconductor manufacturing: EUV lithography. By leveraging laser wakefield acceleration, Inversion Semiconductor aims to double transistor density, triple throughput, and generate up to 10 kW light sources—enabling faster and more cost-effective chip production. With Y Combinator backing, early lab prototypes, and a strategic partnership with LBNL’s BELLA team, the founders—who hail from Imperial College, UCL, Arm, and CERN—bring strong technical expertise and credibility. If they can translate bench-scale demos into fab-ready tools, they could disrupt ASML’s monopoly—opening a potentially multibillion-dollar opportunity in semiconductor hardware.