Our Deep-tech Investment in Nabu Lithography

We recently completed a seed investment in Nabu Lithography, a University of Dayton spinout developing maskless optical lithography systems for prototype and low-to-mid-volume semiconductor fabrication.  Our friends at Omni Ventures  joined us in the round. Our thesis is twofold:

First, ASML holds an estimated 90% share of optical lithography, with tooling built for high-volume fabs. Startups, research labs, defense programs, and photonics, quantum, and sensor companies are underserved: every prototype run carries a multi-million-dollar mask set and a six-to-nine-month queue. As AI compresses design costs, we are seeing demand for chips exceed manufacturing capacity at all levels, including the fast-turn, low-volume chips that Nabu's tool makes today.

Second, near-sourcing chips has become a strategic imperative for every nation, and Nabu can help jumpstart that capability, albeit for a limited segment of the market at first.  But the company has a roadmap to competitive feature sizes, with the potential of moving all chip production closer to the end customer.

Nabu laser-writes circuit patterns directly onto the wafer, eliminating the photomask. Its proprietary resist prevents the exposure bleed that limits competing direct-write approaches from smaller feature sizes.  The first tool, ANU-1, was completed in January 2026 and operates at 180 nm and 10 wafers per hour. Early data shows their chips 5x cheaper five months shorter cycle time. Faster and Cheaper tends to sell well in this market.

Is Nabu a Blitzscaler though?  Working against rapid scaling is the fact that this is hardware, with all of the financing and production issues that ensue with complex electronics.  But this could be winner-take-most land grab, and a platform ecosystem could evolve around the product from design to production.  So the potential is there.

CEO Imad Agha, PhD, and CTO Johnathan Traudt are University of Dayton physicists; Traudt designed and built ANU-1. Chief Strategy Officer Ziad Matar, based in the Netherlands, provides access to Europe's semiconductor ecosystem. The team delivered ANU-1 on approximately $250K of non-dilutive funding.  This is a scrappy, efficient, brilliant team. 

We are excited to have a deep tech “chip on the table” at this lowest level of the AI stack.  Nabu is a great compliment to the portfolio.