Samsung is bringing Mistral AI into its semiconductor operations through on-premises models designed to detect defects and optimize chip production.
The post Samsung Taps Mistral AI for On-Premises Chip Manufacturing appeared first on TechRepublic.
Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.
This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. Compared to older deep ultraviolet lithography, EUV technology harnesses a more powerful source of light with a shorter wavelength to create even smaller features on silicon wafers.
© Michel de Heer | ASML
Resin 3D printing has opened up a whole new scale of resolution for hackers, but the technology can go still finer; commercial micro-SLA and two-photon polymerization printers can print items with sub-micron feature sizes, but the machines are well out of reach for hackers. There’s more than one way to get such high resolution, though, as [Diffraction Limited] demonstrated with his micron-scale resin printer.
The printer builds on [Diffraction Limited]’s previous micro-manipulator and fiber-coupled laser. The micro-manipulator holds the end of the optical fiber just in front of the build plate, which is coated with resin. A 405-nm laser shines through the fiber, curing the resin in a narrow cone in front of the fiber’s core, which the micro-manipulator can trace in a pattern to build up objects, much like an FDM printer. Since the fiber’s inner core is only three microns across, the cured resin shears cleanly away from it when the fiber moves. Since the principle is so similar to an FDM printer, a standard slicer could be used to generate the tool paths.
Early testing proved that the principle worked, but the resin wasn’t absorbent enough for very high resolutions; UV light passed through previously cured resin too easily, limiting the minimum layer height. A UV-absorbent dye dissolved in the resin solves this by limiting the light’s penetration depth. [Diffraction Limited] found that curcumin, the natural dye responsible for turmeric’s bright yellow colour, worked well for this; as an added bonus, alcohol easily extracts it from turmeric powder. This solved the resolution issues well enough for [Diffraction Limited] to print a series of Benchies 150 µm long, a Stanford bunny dwarfed by a human hair, and a few other microscopic pieces. Conveniently, the curcumin dye leaves the printed objects slightly fluorescent under UV light, making them easier to pick up under a microscope.
For a slightly different approach to FDM-inspired microscopic 3D printing, check out necroprinting. For the absolute limits of 3D printing, check out the world’s smallest Benchy.
Xiaomi showcased CyberOne at IFA after reporting a 98% success rate in an EV factory trial, highlighting the promise and limits of humanoid robots.
The post Xiaomi Says CyberOne Hit 98% in Factory Trial Before IFA Demo appeared first on TechRepublic.
Arzeda designs enzymes for products ranging from laundry detergent to stevia. But when it comes time to manufacture at commercial scale, the Seattle-based startup often has to look overseas.
That’s why, when a federal biotechnology commission visited Seattle on Tuesday, the industry came forward with a problem: They have the science, but lack the infrastructure and workforce pipeline to keep innovation on U.S. soil.
Arzeda’s designs reach an estimated 1.8 billion consumers worldwide, and the company has spent the better part of two decades building its technology. The company’s enzymes, sometimes designed in days rather than weeks thanks to AI, are largely manufactured in Western Europe and India — with one U.S. contract manufacturing partner in Wisconsin.
Finding domestic manufacturers with the expertise and capacity to make these specialized proteins has been difficult, CEO Alexandre Zanghellini said. And for a company trying to commercialize new biotechnology, he added, manufacturing delays can be “catastrophic.”
The federal group visiting Seattle — the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology — was created by Congress to address these kinds of problems. Since 2022, the team of 11 bipartisan experts have examined how biotech intersects with national security, and what the U.S. needs to do to remain competitive with China.
Last year, the commission drafted a report to Congress with 49 recommendations spanning at least $15 billion in federal investment over five years, with policies to get more private capital into biotechnology, build domestic manufacturing capacity, strengthen the workforce and reduce vulnerabilities in the supply chain.
Now, with the commission sunsetting in December, its members are taking their case around the country.
In Seattle, the urgent matter is finding a way to keep biotechnology breakthroughs in the United States. Alexander Titus, a commission member who has headed AI-focused biotech initiatives in Seattle and nationwide, said Washington stands out for its early innovation and research.
“Companies like Arzeda are having pretty serious leadership roles in the AI and bio space,” he told GeekWire. “A lot of the work we have done in the commission has revolved around helping the U.S. meet the moment when it comes to this nexus.”
Institutions like the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Allen Institute have helped build a deep life-sciences ecosystem in Washington. UW’s Institute for Protein Design, led by 2024 Nobel Prize winner David Baker, has spun out more than 20 companies.
One is Arzeda, which has an increasingly fast agentic workflow that can fine-tune a model, suggest the next experiment, and allow researchers to test thousands of sequences in a single round. The company’s first AI-designed commercial product was a stevia ingredient launched in 2024; it’s now negotiating a $44 million contract with the federal Defense Threat Reduction Agency related to biothreat response.
While technology is moving quickly, the infrastructure needed to commercialize it is not — creating what Seattle biotech leaders called a “valley of death” between research and manufacturing.
The U.S. has federal funding for basic research, as well as a venture-capital system that can finance early-stage discoveries. But once a company needs to build or access physical infrastructure for commercial-scale manufacturing, the financing becomes much harder. Venture capital investors don’t see the returns attractive enough, Zanghellini said. Banks aren’t eager to finance them, either.
Meanwhile, China has spent two decades making biotechnology a strategic priority, and its 2026 Five-Year Plan doubles down on areas including biomedicine, biomanufacturing, pharmaceuticals and brain-computer interfaces. For U.S. companies in the race, that can create an uncomfortable incentive: If the infrastructure is cheaper and faster somewhere else, that’s where the work often goes.
Last year, Seattle-based Sana Biotechnology canceled plans for a manufacturing plant that was supposed to employ hundreds of workers in Bothell, Wash., instead opting for a contract manufacturer elsewhere to cut costs. Snehal Patel, the company’s executive vice president and chief technical officer, said on Tuesday he’s optimistic the Seattle area could compete on speed and cost with China’s fully integrated supply chain — with the right resources.
Ideally, manufacturing facilities in the U.S. would offer flexibility and knowledge in different products and processes, while ensuring trade secret protection.
The commissioners recognize this need; among their recommendations for Congress is a nationwide manufacturing network for precommercial, bioindustrial product scale-up. That could address the problem Seattle companies face: a startup shouldn’t have to choose between sending manufacturing overseas or trying to build an entire facility itself.
The commission has also recommended requiring companies to disclose points of supply-chain vulnerability in foreign countries of concern. If a geopolitical conflict disrupts the supply of medicines or other biological products, Titus said, the consequences can reach Americans far from any battlefield.
“Being able to keep and maintain our leadership in certain industries allows us to have the edge in any given situation,” he said. “We want our industries to be able to produce here…it’s truly national security in the broadest sense at this point.”
To accomplish this, companies need a stronger industrial biomanufacturing workforce.
Rebecca Bryant, Fred Hutch’s director of government relations and a former staffer for Rep. Adam Smith, said while Washington trains well for research, there’s no equivalent pipeline into entry-level biomanufacturing jobs. Titus sees the issue as part of a broader problem of “bioliteracy” — that biology should be a basic problem-solving tool in the same way that engineering, chemistry and computing are, rather than a specialized field understood by few.
In Washington, the Hutch Advance partnership with Shoreline Community College trains and places lab technicians, while Sana Biotechnology has worked on a model for moving workers into biomanufacturing. Seattle industry leaders suggested a state or federally-supported workforce consortium to bolster the effort. Meanwhile, the commission has urged Congress for more biomanufacturing training support.
According to the commission, the next three years will determine whether the U.S. remains the global leader in biotechnology or cedes the future to China. Of the commission’s 49 recommendations, Titus said, 26 have been written into law in some capacity. The next step is in the hands of Congress, federal agencies, states and the industry itself.
A bio-manufacturing facility in Everett, Wash., which was built by Seattle biotech giant Seagen but never opened under its Pfizer ownership, is getting a new lease on life.
Breakthrough Properties, a life sciences real estate company, said Friday that it has acquired the 270,000-square-foot facility at 215 Shuksan Way for $78 million and leased the entire campus for 21 years to an unnamed global biopharmaceutical company.
Seagen invested approximately $350 million to build out the facility, which was designed for drug manufacturing, quality-control labs, warehousing and distribution. But the company never moved in after drug maker Pfizer acquired Seagen for $43 billion in 2023.
“Pfizer regularly evaluates our manufacturing network to ensure capacity is effectively utilized based on projected product demands,” the company said in a statement to GeekWire in 2024. “After careful evaluation, we have made the difficult decision to wind down construction of the site.”
The facility sits about 25 miles north of Seattle along the I-5 corridor and is Breakthrough Properties’ first investment in the Puget Sound region.
The deal comes as pharmaceutical companies increase investment in U.S. manufacturing capacity. Breakthrough said major drugmakers have announced more than $600 billion in recent commitments to expand domestic production and strengthen supply chains.
The Everett facility was part of Seagen’s broader manufacturing expansion before the company was acquired by Pfizer for $43 billion. GeekWire previously reported on Seagen’s plans for the 270,000-square-foot Everett facility.
Breakthrough Properties is a joint venture between global real estate company Tishman Speyer and biotech investment firm Bellco Capital. A spokesperson for the company, which owns and develops life sciences properties in the U.S. and Europe, declined to provide details on the new tenant or the move-in date.
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