Essay
Sustainability in computing is a hardware problem. Morten Ansteensen, COO of Lace Lithography, on why the future of technological progress depends on the energy economics of chip manufacturing.
In the world of an operator, we are obsessed with risk management. However, we often find ourselves wrestling with its evil twin: uncertainty. This is a situation where either probability or impact is missing from the equation.
Today, we find ourselves in a unique historical moment where both variables are expanding at a breakneck pace. Driven by the exponential rise of artificial intelligence and the looming necessity of a green transition, the future has never felt so volatile. To find the answer, we must take a step back and look at the engine driving these possibilities: the transistor.
The Scaling Bottleneck
Humanity’s greatest feat is arguably the invention of a way to externalise the brain’s computational ability into silicon. The development of the semiconductor is the only human endeavor that has improved on an astronomical scale rather than an incremental one. It is the bedrock upon which all modern progress, including drug discovery and climate modeling, is built.
However, as an operator looking at the road ahead, I see us hitting a physical and economic wall. The infrastructure required to build these semiconductors has become incredibly capital-intensive and energy-heavy. If we continue on our current trajectory, the "energy tax" of simply manufacturing and using the hardware for the next wave of future technologies will become a significant burden. This is where the economics of manufacturing must evolve.
Beyond the Visible Horizon
At Lace, our mission is to drive this development by reimagining how we build at the atomic level. We believe the currently available technologies are actually limited, quite literally, by a very narrow spectrum of light.
We believe the answers to our most pressing computational and energy challenges lie outside this visible range, in the sideview and beyond the traditional horizon of lithography. By expanding this manufacturing toolkit, we are not simply chasing smaller transistors for the sake of Moore’s Law. We are building a manufacturing process that consumes orders of magnitude less energy than the power-hungry systems that currently dominate the industry.
True sustainability in computing will not come from software alone. It will come from a fundamental shift in the energy economics of production, allowing us to build the future without the massive carbon footprint typically associated with high-end fabrication.
The Uncertainty of Deep-Deep Tech
We are often asked what specifically our tools will be used to create. Our honest answer is that we do not yet know.
We view what Lace enables much like the opportunities the first printing press created. One simply did not know if an author would use his press to write beautiful poetry, revolutionary scientific papers, or mundane ledgers. The tool itself only provides the capability for information to scale.
Similarly, Lace is building a manufacturing capability that will allow for the creation of things that cannot be made today, in places where they cannot currently be produced. We are providing the "paper and ink" for the operators driving the next industrial revolution. The promise of our technology lies in the hands of the scientists and engineers who will use it to build what was previously impossible.
Shaping the Impact
If uncertainty is defined as probability multiplied by impact, we must remember that the same equation can be used to define positive change. The increase in manufacturing capability enabled by new lithography techniques will allow us to expand our solution space for the world's most difficult problems: societal infrastructure, carbon capture, and decentralized energy grids.
This is a significant responsibility. Success requires founders, operators, and investors who embrace uncertainty and at the same time insist that the future is not something that happens to us: it is something we enable ourselves to shape through the tools we choose to build with.