XLight Shines With $40 Million Series B

<p><strong>PALO ALTO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; xLight&comma; a company building the world’s most powerful lasers&comma; has closed an oversubscribed &dollar;40 million Series B equity raise&period; The round was led by Playground Global&comma; an early-stage venture capital firm investing in entrepreneurs who have developed breakthroughs in frontier technologies&comma; and joined by Boardman Bay Capital Management&comma; a leading investment manager specializing in high-growth opportunities across transformative technology subsectors&period; Morpheus Ventures and others also joined the round&period; This funding further enables xLight to develop the world’s most powerful extreme-ultraviolet &lpar;EUV&rpar; free electron lasers &lpar;FEL&rpar;&comma; which will revolutionize advanced semiconductor manufacturing and unlock other critical economic and national security applications&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;xLight is on a mission to build a transformational new light source for semiconductor manufacturing that addresses the key challenges facing the industry today – cost&comma; capabilities&comma; and capacity&period; This round will equip the company with the capital needed to complete detailed design and kickstart construction of our full-scale prototype&comma;” <b>said Nicholas Kelez&comma; CEO and CTO of xLight&period; <&sol;b>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Advanced semiconductor manufacturing is approaching a key inflection point – together with our partners across the National Lab and semiconductor ecosystem&comma; and with the support of our investors&comma; we will commercialize free electron lasers and help reclaim American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;xLight represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to restore American leadership in one of the most critical technologies underpinning the semiconductor industry&comma;” <b>said Pat Gelsinger&comma; Executive Chairman of the Board&comma; xLight and General Partner&comma; Playground Global&period;<&sol;b> &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;By delivering an energy‑efficient EUV laser with tenfold improvements over existing technologies&comma; xLight has the potential to drive the next era of Moore’s Law – keeping chip scaling alive&comma; accelerating fab productivity&comma; and anchoring this foundational capability in the U&period;S&period; supply chain&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;xLight’s breakthrough technology delivers a real edge for next-generation semiconductor manufacturing&comma;” <b>said Peter Barrett&comma; General Partner and co-founder at Playground Global&period; <&sol;b>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;With AI driving unprecedented demand for more powerful and complex chips&comma; the industry needs a step change in productivity&period; By applying proven accelerator physics in a novel way&comma; xLight’s EUV FEL platform has the potential to enable not just more efficient production&comma; but entirely new kinds of devices&period; It’s a bold leap forward&comma; and one that will help reignite Moore’s Law&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The company continues to execute against its business goals&comma; as evidenced by the ongoing partnerships with the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education &lpar;CLASSE&rpar;&comma; the Los Alamos National Laboratory &lpar;LANL&rpar;&comma; and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory&comma; three globally recognized&comma; leading research facilities&period; In the last two years&comma; the company has completed key systems designs&comma; including subsystem prototyping and first articles&comma; and established a working relationship with technical leaders at ASML&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>xLight’s work with CLASSE focuses primarily on research and development&comma; with the ultimate goal of commercializing technologies developed by Cornell’s BNL ERL Test Accelerator &lpar;CBETA&rpar;&period; The joint venture with LANL&comma; funded by New Mexico’s TRGR Technology Readiness Initiative&comma; is focused on the application of modern machine learning techniques to enable the automation of a large-scale accelerator&period; Large-scale accelerators like those under cooperative development at LANL are an integral component of xLight’s technical roadmap&period; The company’s collaboration with Fermilab is focused on superconducting radio frequency cavity and cryomodule development and testing – two particle accelerator technologies that the lab mastered over decades&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;