Rebuilding America’s Semiconductor and Battery Supply Chain: Insights from Forge Nano’s Dr. Paul Lichty

The US is in a race against time to secure its domestic supply chain for advanced semiconductors as well as batteries, with a 2028 legislative mandate barring the Pentagon from using foreign-made battery cells and AI chip demand exploding.

The pressure is on US manufacturers to scale up fast.

Now Forge Nano specializes in precision nanocoding at the atomic level and is merging with Archimedes tech-back partners to to go public.

The deal values the Colorado-based company. $1.6 billion and joining us live here at the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the future of US manufacturing is Dr.

Paul Lichty, co-founder and CEO of Forge Nano.

Great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Well, I know this is a national security issue, so tell us how your technology makes a difference when it comes to some of these US industries.

Well, if we're going to reimport manufacturing in the US, we have to do it by leaning forward on new technologies that are homegrown.

At Forge Nano we've developed and scaled an atom by atom manufacturing process which allows us to unlock significant performance improvement and manufacture very small features like what's nascent with semiconductors.

And so being a company that has leaned in on that advanced manufacturing, it allows us to make better products whether it's batteries, whether it's semiconductors, unlocking advanced packaging.

You need that level of atom by atom precision to be competitive and to move the technology forward.

And Paul, when we talk about bringing manufacturing back to the US, it's not like flipping a switch, is it?

It actually takes many years to actually accomplish this, and I understand that you plan to expand into data centers as well as quantum computing.

So tell us your vision for this and also timeline.

Yeah, our technology is a platform.

That allows us to unlock better manufacturing capabilities across different industries, but as you said, building back manufacturing in the US, it takes the entire supply chain that has to be built up and grown at the same time.

We've seen a big need now, especially on the defense side of the market, to.

Integrate new high performance products and require that they're made in the US with an advanced supply chain.

So with that we're able to bring all of this together at the same time to start building back a manufacturing base in the US and for the layperson out there who's trying to understand both the manufacturing side.

As well as the technology side, can you simplify this for us?

Yeah, it's, you know what we do is like Legos and having the ability to use single atoms and stack them like Lego bricks, it gives you a level of control that's just as good as humans are capable of.

So anytime that you want to.

Customize or make an improvement on a product getting down to that level of detail just unlocks massive capabilities and in terms of industries I know that you've highlighted some that this will affect what is your expectation as we move forward not just in 2026 but also beyond and especially given your listing.

We're excited to be going public.

It gives us a broader platform to kind of convey to the public what it is we do, how important and impactful it is, and how key leaning in on newer innovations, advanced manufacturing technologies is if we're going to re-onshore manufacturing in the US and build out that entire supply chain. and building on what you just said, there is a 2028 mandate barring the Pentagon from using foreign battery cells.

So as we consider these things, what does it mean for national security and also defense requirements since it's not simple.

Yes, there's a high bar, a high level of supply chain redundancy, resiliency.

A lot of hoops to jump through to supply and be a trusted supplier to the Department of War, but it's something that needs to happen and we've gotten ourselves into a bit of a situation where there was too much exporting, so the actual manufacturing base to supply not just high performance but secure supply chain products has to be rebuilt.

You know, starting now, so we've been working in Congress with Department of War for many, many years to help identify those key supply chain blocks and help either deploy capital or write policy that helps to build that up in a way that's that's both economically viable and provides security to the warfighter.

And I understand you also received a $100 million grant from the Department of Energy.

So can you tell us how the support has actually accelerated your manufacturing timeline and also your business strategy?

Yeah, there's there's something called the missing middle in the capital markets where there's lots of funding for startups, but when you talk about manufacturing companies, there's there's.

Kind of a dearth of capital that actually gets to building the first factories that are of a scale where your costs and your economies of scale come down and you can be competitive and we haven't seen as much of that in the US around manufacturing and so these government grants.

Really help enable us to get across that gap, get the capital needed to build something that's going to be competitive globally.

And finally, before I let you go, Paul, of course there's this valuation for the company.

So what are your plans for growth and scaling?

We're going to keep going.

Like I said, this is a platform that unlocks very significant performance improvements across all kinds of products, and so we want to keep growing the company, making better products, bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Well, Paul, it was great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing the story of your organization.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you.