ASML Spin-Out Invisix Raises $21.4M Seed to See Inside Chips

Jan de Vries · 2026-06-01

Invisix, a semiconductor metrology company based in Eindhoven, has just raised an oversubscribed $21.4 million Seed round. The funding will help them build next-generation measurement tools for advanced chip manufacturing. Investors include Hitachi Ventures, Transition Ventures, imec.xpand, Doosan Investment Co., and a tier-1 semiconductor manufacturer. That's a pretty impressive lineup for a seed-stage hardware startup. ### What Invisix Actually Does Christina Porter, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Invisix, puts it simply: "Semiconductor manufacturers can't build what they can't see." As chips become more 3D, the industry needs new metrology tools that can look inside these incredibly complex miniature skyscrapers without destroying them. Invisix was spun out from ASML, the Dutch semiconductor equipment giant. Founded in 2025 by ASML alumni and PhD physicists Christina Porter (CEO) and Sietse van der Post (CTO), the company is commercializing a decade of soft x-ray metrology R&D that's been incubated within ASML since 2015. ### The Technology Behind It The company uses soft x-ray scatterometry to reconstruct the detailed 3D structure of next-generation semiconductor devices at high throughput. Think of it like this: building a modern chip is like constructing a nanoscale skyscraper. Before adding the next layer, manufacturers need to know whether the previous one was printed correctly. As advanced logic and memory devices become ever smaller and more complex, optical tools can no longer resolve the internal structures that matter most. That's where Invisix's system comes in. ### Why This Matters for Chipmakers "These devices form the backbone of high-performance computing and underpin the promise of AI," the company noted in its press release. "Without the ability to measure them, manufacturers are forced into slower, costlier, often destructive alternatives. In a market where even marginal yield improvements can unlock billions in revenue, that gap is critical." Invisix claims to solve this with a system that uses High Harmonic Generation (HHG), a process rooted in discoveries recognized by the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. Here's how it works: - A short-pulsed drive laser excites noble-gas atoms into a high-energy state - The atoms then emit short-wavelength light, called soft x-rays, at many colors - This generates a richer 3D signal than typical single-wavelength lasers The system combines HHG with proprietary reconstruction algorithms and machine learning to reconstruct the detailed 3D internal structure of devices. Crucially, it does this in a non-destructive way. The whole architecture has been designed to scale to the throughput needed for high-volume manufacturing. ### The Team and Road Ahead Invisix has licensed a significant technology package based on soft x-ray research conducted at ASML. The founders are joined by many veterans of the ASML soft x-ray program, along with senior industry hires including COO Roald Dogge, formerly COO of NT. For chipmakers racing to bring new nodes into production, Invisix offers a faster path to deployment. And with $21.4 million in seed funding, they have the resources to make it happen.