The Albuquerque foundry turning photosensitive glass into the substrates that carry tomorrow's chips - for AI, 5G, radar, photonics and defense.
Glass is one of the oldest materials humans make. 3D Glass Solutions has spent two decades making it one of the newest in a semiconductor fab.
3D Glass Solutions, Inc. - known as 3DGS - is an advanced-packaging company that builds the layer chips sit on rather than the chips themselves. Its work centers on APEX, a patented photosensitive glass-ceramic. Expose the glass to ultraviolet light through a photomask, bake it, and the patterned regions convert to ceramic. Etch those regions away with diluted acid and what remains is a precise, three-dimensional microstructure - through-glass vias, cavities and passive components - while the surrounding glass stays intact.
That trick matters because the packaging layer has quietly become one of the hardest problems in electronics. As transistor shrinks slow down, gains increasingly come from how chips are connected and packaged. Glass offers low signal loss at high frequencies, thermal and dimensional stability, optical transparency for photonics, and the ability to form large, flat panels - a combination silicon and organic substrates struggle to match.
The company traces its origin to a discovery at Sandia National Laboratories, where a researcher recognized that the unusual behavior of certain glass ceramics could be harnessed to manufacture precise RF passive components. Founder and CTO Jeb Flemming turned that insight into a company in 2005. Today it operates an ISO 9001 and AS9100 certified foundry in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
3DGS serves RF and wireless, automotive radar, photonics, high-performance computing and AI, medical, aerospace and defense. It sells glass substrates and interposers, 3D integrated passive devices, and 3D heterogeneous integration foundry services - plus the design kits customers need to build on the platform.
When a chipmaker, an equipment maker and a defense prime all write the same check, the substrate is worth a second look. Intel Capital, Applied Ventures and Lockheed Martin Ventures did exactly that.
Modern RF, photonic and high-performance-computing systems keep demanding more: higher frequencies, tighter integration, less signal loss, better heat handling, and smaller footprints. Traditional silicon and organic substrates hit walls on one axis while giving ground on another.
Laser-drilled glass, an obvious alternative, tends to introduce micro-fractures around each hole that hurt reliability. 3DGS's APEX process forms through-glass vias by chemistry rather than brute force, yielding what the company describes as micro-fracture-free holes with superior electrical routing density.
The payoff is measurable: the company reports a 66% reduction in RF chip size and 2.2 times more parts per wafer versus alternatives - packing more capability into less space while improving the economics of each wafer.
Values as published by 3DGS for the APEX platform; specifications vary by product configuration.
The entire manufacturing loop is deceptively short. That simplicity is the point - it is what lets the process run at high volume, at low cost, on U.S. soil.
Ultraviolet light patterns the glass wafer through a photomask, defining exactly where structure will form.
Controlled heat converts the exposed regions from glass into ceramic, while the rest of the wafer stays glass.
Diluted acid removes the ceramic regions, leaving micro-fracture-free 3D microstructures and through-glass vias.
APEX glass is unlike other substrates: processing transforms patterned areas to ceramic while others remain glass, and etching the ceramic creates 3D microstructures while keeping the glass intact. 3D Glass Solutions, on the APEX platform
The patented photosensitive glass-ceramic and expose-bake-etch process at the heart of everything - enabling precise 3D microstructures and through-glass vias at wafer scale.
Low-loss glass core substrates and interposers with high interconnect density and fine-pitch redistribution for RF, HPC, AI and photonic systems.
Wafer-level RF passives and high-Q filters for frequencies up to and beyond 20 GHz - shrinking RF chips while improving performance.
3D heterogeneous integration - multi-layer glass stacking and chiplet integration for commercial, defense, academic and government customers.
Process design kits and assembly design kits that let customers design, qualify and scale products on the APEX glass platform.
Optically transparent glass (93% at 1550nm) makes a single wafer serve both photonic circuits and structural microfabrication.
3DGS is a B2B foundry. Its customers are commercial and defense electronics manufacturers, universities and U.S. government agencies working in wireless infrastructure, mobile, automotive radar, photonics, high-performance computing and AI, medical, aerospace and defense.
Its place in the market sits underneath the headline chips. As the AI and data-center boom strains packaging, glass interposers and core substrates have become a strategic layer - and 3DGS is one of a small group of specialists, alongside larger materials players, competing to define it.
The company is a named partner in DARPA's Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing (NGMM) program, joining primes and foundries including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, GlobalFoundries and Qorvo to advance U.S.-based 3D heterogeneous integration.
Babu Mandava serves as President & CEO. He is a repeat semiconductor founder - he previously co-founded Beceem Communications, which Broadcom acquired in 2010 - and he now leads 3DGS's push to scale U.S.-based production of glass substrates and integrated passives.
Jeb H. Flemming, the founder, is CTO and the inventor behind the APEX platform, carrying the technology from a national-lab insight to a manufacturable process. The leadership bench includes CFO Adam Gushard and Senior VP of Operations & Engineering Sal Pavone, with an advisory board that includes packaging authority Madhavan Swaminathan.
The culture is engineering-led and quality-obsessed - a small team of roughly 66 people running a certified fab where materials science, precision lithography and defense-grade standards meet.
3DGS will use this funding to increase its U.S.-based manufacturing capacity for high-volume production of superior-performance 3D integrated passives and substrate products. 3D Glass Solutions, Series C announcement, 2023
Jeb Flemming founds the company to commercialize glass-ceramic microfabrication rooted in Sandia National Labs research.
The patented photosensitive glass and expose-bake-etch process is refined for wafer-level RF passives.
3DGS builds out its ISO 9001 and AS9100 certified glass manufacturing facility in New Mexico.
Round led by Walden Catalyst Ventures with Intel Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures and Applied Ventures pushes total funding above $54M.
Named a partner in the Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing program for U.S. 3D heterogeneous integration.
Profile compiled from public sources including 3dgsinc.com, Intel Capital, Walden Catalyst, BusinessWire, the Albuquerque Journal and DARPA. Financial and specification figures are approximate and as reported publicly; verify directly with the company for current data.