xLight Secures $40M Series B to Advance EUV Laser Technology for Semiconductor Manufacturing

xLight, a Palo Alto-based company developing high-power lasers, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by Playground Global, with participation from Boardman Bay Capital Management, Morpheus Ventures, and others. The capital will support the design and construction of a full-scale prototype for extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) free electron lasers (FEL), aimed at advancing semiconductor manufacturing and supporting U.S. economic and national security applications.

The company, founded in 2021, is focused on commercializing particle accelerator-driven FELs to address challenges in semiconductor production, including cost, capacity, and performance. xLight’s EUV FEL platform is designed to improve energy efficiency and deliver tenfold performance gains over existing technologies, potentially enabling new device types and supporting continued chip scaling under Moore’s Law.

xLight is collaborating with leading research institutions, including the Cornell Laboratory for Accelerator-based ScienceS and Education (CLASSE) on technology commercialization, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) on machine learning for large-scale accelerators, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory on superconducting radio frequency cavity and cryomodule development. The company has also established a technical partnership with ASML and completed key system design...