Hi YC!

We’re Noah and Colin, the founders of Aerogen Systems. We’re building the next generation of clean infrastructure for chip manufacturing.

TL;DR: Aerogen Systems makes semiconductor tools clean themselves. Talos, our tool-integrated purification system, continuously destroys airborne contaminants around the wafer, creating 10–100x cleaner tool environments while reducing dependence on ultra-high-purity nitrogen. Over time, Talos becomes the foundation for the Cleanpipe, an ultra-clean interconnect network that lets wafers move between tools without depending on the surrounding cleanroom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yBzBCzwFV8

The Problem

Chip features keep getting smaller, but cleanrooms do not scale with them.

Semiconductor manufacturers spend billions building enormous cleanroom facilities, then spend even more trying to isolate their most advanced wafers from the environment they just built.

As features approach the atomic scale, trace airborne contaminants that were once tolerable can create defects, reduce yield, and disrupt some of the most sensitive manufacturing processes on Earth. Yet the industry's answer has largely been more of the same: cleaner facilities, more filtration, and more ultra-high-purity nitrogen flooding sensitive equipment.

The proof is in the yield numbers. 2026 reporting puts Intel’s 18A program between roughly 50% and 65% yield as it pushed the node toward high-volume production. With global semiconductor sales projected to reach $1.5 trillion in 2026, every percentage point matters. Improvements in yield and manufacturing efficiency can represent tens of billions of dollars in value.

The Solution

At Aerogen Systems, we think the industry is approaching this problem backwards.

The whole factory does not need to be a massive cleanroom. Only the environment immediately surrounding the wafer does.

Talos is our proprietary, tool-integrated purification system. It sits directly inside semiconductor manufacturing equipment and continuously recirculates and purifies the environment around the wafer. Instead of constantly replacing contaminated gas with more ultra-high-purity nitrogen, Talos destroys contaminants at the point of use, offering 10–100x cleaner tool environments while dramatically reducing dependence on purge gas and consumable filtration.

1. Rendering of standalone Talos unit.

But Talos is only part of the vision.

With tool-integrated purification units as a foundation, we build the Cleanpipe: ultra-clean interconnect infrastructure that protects wafers as they move from machine to machine across the fab. Talos cleans the tools. The Cleanpipe connects tools to each other. Together, they delete the cleanroom and all the expenses that come with it.

What We’ve Built

Talos has progressed through multiple generations of hardware development and is protected by patent-pending IP. We’ve validated the core purification architecture and are now working toward tool integrations, pilots, and commercial deployments with semiconductor manufacturers and equipment companies.

2. Test results showing Talos bringing industry-standard 6N purification levels down to 8N — a 100x improvement in cleanliness.

The next step is connecting these purified environments together through the Cleanpipe, creating an ultra-clean path around the wafer from tool to tool and ultimately removing the need to maintain the entire fab as one enormous cleanroom.

The Team

Aerogen Systems started as a NASA-backed research group at the University of Michigan, where our team developed the underlying purification technology.

We have spent the last several years designing, testing, patenting, and rebuilding this technology for extreme manufacturing environments.

• Noah, CEO, worked in manufacturing engineering at SpaceX, where he focused on production rate and yield improvement for the Starship program.

• Colin, CTO, previously built advanced particle detectors at H3D and led the team through the earliest design cycles of Talos.

Our Ask

We want to meet semiconductor fabs, equipment OEMs, and manufacturing teams interested in pilots, tool integrations, and commercial deployments. If this sounds like you, please reach out to hi@aerogensystems.com!

We are building toward a world where fabs no longer need billion-dollar cleanrooms to manufacture the world’s most advanced chips.