An investigation into Substrate
52 comments
·October 31, 2025muglug
burnte
She’ll say anything for a dollar. She’s the foreshock that predicts the earthquake.
bobxmax
[dead]
dang
Recent and related:
US startup Substrate announces chipmaking tool that it says will rival ASML - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45745536 - Oct 2025 (4 comments)
Can Substrate disrupt ASML using particle acceleration? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732431 - Oct 2025 (11 comments)
baobabKoodaa
> Would you believe that the founder—who could not make an alarm clock for $70 M, but who has allegedly beaten ASML for under $100 M—has also found time to solve nuclear fusion?
Oof. Before this point in the article I wasn't sure if it's fraud, but comparing the money raised for a (failed) alarm clock vs money raised for supposedly-successful ASML competitor was a good of putting things in perspective. And the nuclear fusion thing... oh god.
georgeburdell
I was a process engineer for a decade. A lithography machine is one of the less interesting things that a compact particle accelerator would be useful for. They could sell 1000X more if they just focused on the accelerator, and medical diagnostic companies would buy them by the thousands
impossiblefork
The rah-rah stuff on their homepage really put me off, as a European. I didn't expect it to be fraud though-- I thought it was rubbish, but that they actually had something somewhat useful, somehow, since I thought Peter Thiel was smart.
There are some strange things in this writeup-- I don't think it's clear that the machine they claim to intend to sell is supposed to be a direct writing machine, I assumed it was supposed to be like EUV but with X-rays and some kind of special x-ray tolerant photoresist, but the identity of the founders is at least quite damning, the electrostatic chuck thing might be damning I guess, unless there's some special concern. I assumed that even if it were sensible, it wouldn't work well enough, with damage to the resist or something else that manufacturers would find unacceptable, but this isn't my area, so I can't really judge.
bee_rider
Thiel is a successful web company startup investor guy, right? So about as far away from semiconductors as one can get while still working vaguely with computers.
“Smart,” I mean, who knows. Sometimes our talents, expertise, and opportunities line up in a way to make us look smart, other times they don’t.
He’s also fairly politically connected and this seems to be a pretty… politically connected project.
impossiblefork
Okay, but he played chess at a high level and this requires some willingness to practice calculation and visualization which is similar to things that are at least cleverness-adjacent.
bee_rider
The issue isn’t whether or not he’s clever. The issue is whether being a clever software guy tells you anything semiconductors.
IMO the more likely thing is that he’s clever and expecting to get a return-on-investment using expertise that he’s already proven. Not semiconductors, but investor networking.
rebolek
I don't know if he's smart. He's certainly lucky. And based on his lunatic ravings about antichrist or whatever, he's IMO borderline insane. Also, he's disgusting being.
SilverElfin
This isn’t about Thiel but two other people who are the founders. Investors do due diligence but that also only gets you so far. Note that there are other prominent investors like GC.
impossiblefork
Yes, but it's a lot of money.
Thiel apparently 'only' has 27 billion USD, so if this is mostly his investment it's 1/27 of all the money he has, and I think when you're spending those sums on highly technical stuff involving physics and precision, you'd have the person representing the project you're planning to invest in, some physicists you know and trust, some people from a relevant industry, and then you sit down and think about the idea as you do when you read a paper, and you'd sit in this seminar for hours and use the blackboard, and my assumption is that you'd go away very close to knowing for sure whether it would work or not.
rebolek
1/270. And I would be surprised if it was his money he invested.
layer8
> I thought Peter Thiel was smart.
Maybe reconsider: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...
impossiblefork
Yes, but I thought that that didn't represent his actual beliefs but was lies or signalling for the sake of other people similar to himself.
fabian2k
I felt slightly more comfortable when I thought the really rich people were just cynically promoting views that benefitted them in some way. It is disconcerting to realize that a lot of them truly have batshit crazy and extreme views.
ramshanker
I have been thinking, if the "generate soft xray for lithography by particle accelerators" is remotely feasible as being claimed by substrate. I remember reading some chineese startup / university also trying to do so. ASML is best position to execute this. They have the money, cashflow and talent, R&D culture all available. ASML may very well be the one actually doing this.
SilverElfin
It’s possible ASML is the best to do this. But the fundamental research behind ASML’s modern tech is actually from a DARPA project if you go back far enough. While certainly ASML did years of work to bring the tech to commercial readiness, I wonder if they’re able to completely rethink their approach or if they’re too invested in one way of doing things.
embedding-shape
> But the fundamental research behind ASML’s modern tech is actually from a DARPA project if you go back far enough
Trying to trace things like this is a fools errand though. Trace things back further than that, the microscope was invented in Europe, and further back the magnifying glass somewhere in the Middle East/Mediterranean. You'll just stop wherever it's convenient for the point you're trying to make.
Ultimately, what was available + what was known was put into practice by ASML and they're the ones best at executing that thing right now today, and some things they're the only ones able to too, which isn't very too common.
But I guess only time will tell if they can use whatever they've built and make it into something even more.
SilverElfin
> Trying to trace things like this is a fools errand though. Trace things back further than that, the microscope was invented in Europe
Regardless of what other prior inventions it depended on, EUV technology itself was invented in the US, and we know that factually - it’s not a fool’s errand. ASML literally approached the US government for a chance to license the technology. This was in the late 90s. That’s not to take away the work ASML has done since then to make it commercially viable through their machines (or TSMC in implementing and integrating ASML machines).
bigyabai
FWIW, I think you could argue that modern high-yield EULV is a wholly Taiwanese invention. For all of America's DARPA prowess, Intel couldn't even play second-fiddle to TSMC's worst fab nodes.
embedding-shape
It seems clear that the founder's record has some significant failures, but thinking the other way, are there other founders who've been successful today after similarly significant past failures? "Past performance isn't indicative of future results" or however it goes.
It's easy to get stuck judging people based on their history, so you easily skip over other details that might make their current efforts different, we all think (hope?) we grow, meaning so does this founder, despite past failures. I'm not trying to say that this is a signal either way, but I wish others don't judge me in the same basic way in the future, as I too have failed in the past (although not about solving nuclear fusion) but think I'm getting better every day. Of course, people will judge me and others either way, but it seems more reasonable to not not just jump into history first, and focus on other details that actually evaluate the ideas themselves.
bix6
Fascinating
Joel_Mckay
Wafer technology like Directed Self-Assembly does exist ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_assembly_of_micro-_an... ), but did not have defect rates low enough to build complex chips.
Also, process fabs are volume driven technologies, and focus on getting as much product out the door as quickly as possible. A lot of technologies will never be compatible with that optimization in a business context.
Samsung was sort of the exception to this trend, and took huge risks that paid off =3
null
paulsutter
Here's a sober analysis based on actual experts with access to more information than what is publicly released:
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/how-to-kill-2-monopoli...
Skeptics welcome to review the following section:
> These are extraordinary claims and thus demand extraordinary evidence. Let’s take them one-by-one:
And here is their conclusion:
> Naysayers will point out a million reasons why this is improbable, difficult, etc. - and they are mostly correct. There is a big difference between lab-scale and industrialized, high-volume tools. Substrate itself realizes this and agrees they are in for a lot of development and scaling pain. Still, they have at least developed some impressive capabilities on the most complex part of the process (litho) in a short amount of time (2-3 years).
ChrisArchitect
Related:
Can Substrate disrupt ASML using particle acceleration?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/technology/can-a-start-up... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732431)
See also:
Return to Silicon Valley
rebolek
If there's a question in title, the answer is usually NO.
They're being advised by Kyrsten Sinema, which is another big warning sign — similar to Theranos's board full of retired politicians.