An investigation into Substrate
substack.com> 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.
They're being advised by Kyrsten Sinema, which is another big warning sign — similar to Theranos's board full of retired politicians.
She’ll say anything for a dollar. She’s the foreshock that predicts the earthquake.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, but if you're actually smart you know when you don't know things, because you know what really knowing something is and that you aren't there. You'd know that you don't know much about semiconductors, so you read up and bring actual experts and you sit down until you understand, because you know can understand almost anything that makes sense with enough patience.
What do you think has happened? It seems like he invested a chunk of money into an obviously silly company. He’s pretty rich, though, so maybe it isn’t really an amount that motivates him to learn about the field.
I’m sticking with my original speculation:
> He’s also fairly politically connected and this seems to be a pretty… politically connected project.
Also, w.r.t. the politically connected thing: that's something the company tries to play at, but they aren't actually politically connected.
Thiel is, and if he is to realise something political with these guys, then he can only do so if they aren't fraudsters but are actually doing sensible things, or the political project fails. It can of course also be a fakeout for negotiations "we'll have an ASML clone tomorrow, you don't have any leverage" even though they don't, but I don't think so, because if you tried that fakeout on an EU politician, they'll talk to their guys 'is it true?' and those guys will actually ask people at AMSL "is this is a real competitor?"
I think they can still be fraudsters while being politically useful; the story just needs to stay together for a bit over a year to be useful for the last election that Trump will ever care about (2028 midterms, since he’s term limited), or three years to keep help out Thiel’s guy Vance.
It doesn’t have to be a centerpiece or anything, so it probably doesn’t have to stand up to much scrutiny from the general public. Like if the government gives them some little grants, they’ll have enough cover to include “revitalizing and onshoring US semiconductors” or whatever in a speech. The press here is not very aggressive about these sorts of claims.
I think he wasted at least 100 million dollars of which some fraction were his own.
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.
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.
1/270. And I would be surprised if it was his money he invested.
Still, it's worth at least a whole day for anybody, including at least two academicians.
If I had $270k and something cost $1k, I wouldn't waste a whole day on it.
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.
> I thought Peter Thiel was smart.
Maybe reconsider: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...
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.
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.
But I guess not that unexpected. They have barely any peers and have immense power and infinite money. Hardly a recipe for staying grounded and socially minded
One of the best present day examples are Saudi Arab mega projects.
They tend to be crazy ideas with fundamental flaws and either don't happen are are silently reshaped to be feasible.
The "clever" interpretation would be that this is primarily done to fleece the states treasury, and I'm certain that still happens, but I firmly believe that the driving force is one ultra rich ultra powerful naive person without any negative feedback from his inner circle.
If they draw something on a piece of paper, believing themselves to be very visionary and order that thing to be built people will just start doing so without a word of warning. Speak up and you might find yourself short of a few limbs.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> I think you could argue that modern high-yield EULV is a wholly Taiwanese invention
It is not. EUV was literally invented in America in government funded research, and licensed to ASML. Taiwan (TSMC) purchased ASML machines.
> For all of America's DARPA prowess, Intel couldn't even play second-fiddle to TSMC's worst fab nodes.
These have nothing to do with each other. One is a private corporation that made a strategic mistake. The other is a government agency.
> EUV was literally invented in America
Modern, high-yield EULV was not. The CRADA efforts did not produce high-yield dies, nor did it get beyond theorizing modern nodes.
> These have nothing to do with each other
Maybe that's how you wish things were. But we have two admins back-to-back scraping Intel's corpse off the pavement.
The only company making EUVL machines is ASML. The EUV light source was invented in the US and according to wikipedia is used under licence by ASML.
If you have a source that says "modern, high-yield EULV" does not use ASML machines, or does not use the laser pulsed tin plasma light source invented in the US, I'd be interested
The EUV light source is just one step of the manufacturing process. There's also maintenance, preprod, doping, testing and packaging steps that are all customary to specific fabs and difficult to optimize at-scale. A big part of why Intel wasn't an EUV early adopter was the complexity compared to DUV.
Claiming that America invented modern high-yield EUV in the lab is like saying Germany invented the Ferrari because Italy imported their steel presses to manufacture it. Not only are you being pedantic, you're not using pedantry to make a distinction that anyone will respect. Chipmaking is not a pushbutton process with line-replaceable units. This kind of reductive reasoning is what puts detail-oriented cultures ahead of profit-oriented ones.
> 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).
Note that in the 90s EUV was about as mature as fusion that's to say not at all. Not many people believed it could be actually used to make CPUs
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
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).
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.
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
If there's a question in title, the answer is usually NO.
Fascinating
> The founder is known con-artist involved in such other things as solving nuclear fusion and stealing $2.5M in a Kickstarter scam.
Haha, am I still supposed to believe VC’s are competent, intelligent people who deserve their stature when they fall for scams that should be more obvious than a Nigerian prince scam.
Lack of due diligence often gets characterized as a failed investment. And failed investments are often justified as a cost of running a VC firm, as long as one of them is a 100x success, the 99 failed ones don’t matter. But yes, you’d expect more due diligence from investors, but a lot of times it’s just about how likeable you are and who you know. We wouldn’t have VCs funding Adam Neumann’s new venture with hundreds of millions of dollars as soon as his Wework nonsense got exposed and collapsed.
The worst part of DD is when your report clearly states some massive red flags and that the deal should not happen, and the money guys go forward anyway. Why? Because then 6-12 months later they’re angry that what you said was true and you get tasked with fixing it. I recently had to quit a company because they money guys kept wanting me to do dumber and dumber things because they refused to acknowledge the fundamental failure of their plan and were determined to do it their way. I quit, and then everything I was holding up fell down as they tore out the supports to do it their way. Within months the board finally fired the CEO and COO, asked me back, and I declined. It was a purely ego driven failure.
> investments are often justified as a cost of running a VC firm
> But yes, you’d expect more due diligence from investors, but a lot of times it’s just about how likeable you are and who you know.
I think both of these can be true simultaneously. The limits of due diligence and the practical ability to evaluate an investment opportunity (quickly and at low cost) mean you sometimes do make mistakes, even “stupid” ones. But also, access and networks and old boys clubs are rampant in the VC ecosystem.
Is it fair to characterize a founder of a failed startup as a con man? I.e. did he make claims that were factually untrue, and intentionally deceived investors?
Disclaimer: Subjective opinion, as a founder.
It’s as fair as characterizing an athlete saying he’s competing to win.
A common logical/semantic mistake is that claims about future facts are lies. They can be exaggerations, and we do see this often and I’m personally annoyed when I see it. These claims can be genuine or not. I often think it’s easier for a founder to be naive (or crazy) than not, because they can believe (sometimes strongly) the things they say.
But neither are lies. A lie is when you misrepresent a fact, something that already happened. That’s a big causal difference.
The large gray area is when someone misrepresents intent (as with most cases for cons). This, I suspect, is the main questions you should be asking, but I suspect it falls into the ethics rather than legal debates.
Yes! He did, so it is.
What investors were intentionally deceived and what were the lies specifically? I saw something about a Kickstarter, but it's trickier as there is no promise of delivered products, it ends up being an donation basically, although Kickstarter try to make that intentionally vague.
> There is no promise of delivered product
There absolutely is a promise. Even if you manage to legally find a way to not get sued, taking advantage of the fact that everyone who gave you money believed it was a promise is still scamming them.
Isn't the whole thing (or two) with Kickstarter is that if it's not funded, everyone gets their money back and if it's funded, the creator tries to deliver the goals according to the timeline but if they don't, they're not held liable for that? So if for some reason the creator run out of money before they could send actual products, you as a donator don't have the right to get your money back? Maybe I misunderstood the whole concept of Kickstarter.
James Proud:
* Promised an alarm clock that would do a bunch of things
* Took $2.5M in funding from Kickstarter
* Took another $50M in funding from elsewhere
* Delivered a piece of hardware that did essentially none of what was promised.
It's all detailed in OP and the linked Verge article. That's a scam and I'm not interested in your legalese arguing whether they can be sued or not.
> I'm not interested in your legalese arguing whether they can be sued or not
What... You know, it doesn't matter. Thanks for the summary anyways!
Ethics and legality are independent concepts. A scam is an ethical construct.
>"Even if you manage to legally find a way to not get sued"