A

Atomic Machines

Develops atomically precise MEMS fabrication machines

Vice President - Matter Compiler Engineering

Full-Time
$350k - $500k+ Equity
Expert
Bachelor's
Emeryville, CA, USA+1 moreMore locations: Santa Clara, CA, USA
In Person
Engineering ManagementEngineering Leadership

About the job

Requirements
  • At least 15 years leading cross-organizational teams, including managers and directors, and driving organization-level hiring and talent strategy, plus 7 years as an individual contributor building complex robotics, precision automation, or advanced manufacturing systems.
  • Demonstrated ownership of multiple hardware systems shipped to production, from early prototypes through manufacturing ramp and sustained field operation.
  • Deep expertise in precision mechanism design, including stiffness and compliance, vibration and dynamics, thermal drift, error budgeting including Abbe errors, and practical metrology.
  • Strong command of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, tolerance stack-ups, and design for manufacturability, assembly, and service, including supplier and quality-team collaboration.
  • Experience selecting and integrating sensors and actuators, including encoders, force/torque, vision, capacitive/inductive sensors, pneumatics, motors, and bearings, with understanding of physics and failure modes.
  • Track record building hardware test and validation frameworks, including DVP&R, fixture design, automated testing where appropriate, and pass/fail criteria tied to requirements.
  • Strong reliability and failure analysis skills, including DFMEA/PFMEA, root cause analysis, DOE, CAPA, wear/fatigue, contamination, and production field-debug discipline.
  • Systems-level leadership and communication across mechanical, electrical, controls, software, vision, manufacturing, and supply chain domains.
  • Minimum bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related field, with deep hands-on hardware execution.
Responsibilities
  • Cultivate a high-performing leadership team by managing managers and directors while ensuring their teams deliver against strategic objectives and engineering excellence standards.
  • Own node hardware architecture, including mechanism selection, kinematics, structural design, thermal control, sensing, actuation, and serviceability, with clear interfaces to software, controls, and manufacturing.
  • Drive hardware requirements and error budgets for precision, throughput, and reliability, including accuracy, repeatability, stiffness, settle time, drift, MTBF/MTTR, and uptime, and translate them into subsystem specifications and verification plans.
  • Lead design and industrialization of motion subsystems, including stages/gantries, rotary axes, Z/force axes, end-effectors, fixturing, and in-situ metrology aligned with sub-micron performance needs.
  • Establish design processes including design reviews, interface control documents (ICDs), GD&T and tolerance analysis standards, DFMEA/PFMEA, verification and validation (V&V) plans, and engineering change control (ECO/ECN).
  • Build scalable calibration and alignment strategies into hardware using datums, fiducials, kinematic mounts, and reference artifacts, and partner with software to automate calibration, compensation, and drift detection.
  • Partner with Manufacturing Engineering to develop the prototype-to-production pipeline for node hardware, including supplier strategy, DFM/DFA/DFS, first-article inspection, incoming quality, build documentation, assembly/test fixtures, and ramp to stable yields.
  • Drive reliability engineering for nodes, including test strategy for lifetime, wear, thermal cycling, vibration, and contamination; FRACAS; root cause analysis; preventive maintenance design; and reliability growth metrics.
  • Hire, develop, and lead a high-performing multidisciplinary hardware organization covering mechanical engineering, opto-mechanics, and test/validation.
  • Partner cross-functionally to integrate nodes into complete manufacturing systems and debug factory issues.

About the company

A

Atomic Machines

View
cbWebsite

Atomic Machines designs and ships fabrication systems aimed at atomically precise manufacturing (APM), starting with MEMS microfabrication. Its machines turn digital designs directly into physical objects at the atomic level, enabling extremely small and precise devices. The core product is a fabrication system that combines specialized hardware with control software and ongoing maintenance services, sold to semiconductor, automotive, healthcare, and consumer electronics manufacturers who need higher precision, efficiency, and scalability in their manufacturing. Unlike traditional MEMS fabrication that relies on silicon-based processes, Atomic Machines pursues a direct atom-by-atom construction path to improve performance and yield, and it offers custom fabrication solutions for large-scale or specialized needs. The company’s goal is to raise the bar for precision and manufacturing efficiency by making atomically precise production practical and scalable across multiple industries.

Company Size

201-500

Company Stage

Seed

Total Funding

N/A

Headquarters

Emeryville, California

Founded

2019

Get referred to Atomic Machines

See people who can refer or advise you

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • February 28, 2025 Series B added $75 million and lifted total funding to $144 million.
  • California backs $156.3 million of expansion spending and 305 new California jobs.
  • Job postings in 2026 show aggressive hiring across controls, quality, integration, and manufacturing teams.

What critics are saying

  • Stealth mode and no disclosed revenue leave product-market fit unproven in 2026.
  • The company told California it would relocate operations without tax credits, exposing funding dependence.
  • Failure to ship MEMS systems by 2027 destroys the expansion case and triggers recapture.

What makes Atomic Machines unique

  • Matter Compiler targets MEMS classes unavailable to semiconductor fabs, per 2026 job posts.
  • Atomic Machines pairs atomically precise manufacturing with fabrication systems, software, and maintenance revenue.
  • California awarded Atomic Machines $15 million for MEMS expansion across Santa Clara and Emeryville.

Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?

Benefits

  • Professional Development Budget

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

2%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

0%
SignalRaise
Oct 10th, 2026
Hardware and AI agents draw serious capital this week.

Hardware and AI agents draw serious capital this week. Four rounds totaling over $500M closed in days, with sovereign funds, chip giants, and top-tier VCs all moving toward physical AI and deep hardware. Chip giants are now writing checks. Nvidia's name appears in two of this week's major rounds, and that pattern is worth examining closely. As SiliconANGLE reported, Nvidia and Samsung co-invested in Nous Research's $90 million Series B, led by Robot Ventures with Y Combinator also participating [[1]]. The round values Nous - the developer of the Hermes AI agent - at $1.5 billion. Separately, as TechCrunch and Unite.AI both reported, Nvidia joined Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung, and Microsoft's M12 fund in Mecka AI's $60 million Series B, led by Sequoia [[3]] [[5]]. When semiconductor companies invest in software and data startups rather than simply selling to them, it signals that they are trying to lock in the application layer early. For founders raising in AI infrastructure or physical AI, a strategic check from a chip manufacturer now carries a different weight than it did two years ago - it can function as both capital and a distribution signal to other investors. Robot data infrastructure attracts institutional conviction. Mecka AI's round is notable not just for its size but for its breadth. As Unite.AI reported, the $60 million Series B drew new investors including Nvidia, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung, and M12, alongside existing backers Kindred, Framework Ventures, and Neo [[5]]. The company collects and analyzes human motion data to train humanoid and other robots - a category that sits beneath the more visible robotics hardware plays but arguably enables them. The $500 million valuation reported by TechCrunch suggests the market is pricing robot data infrastructure comparably to earlier enterprise SaaS rounds, despite the field being younger and more capital-intensive [[3]]. For founders building data pipelines, labeling systems, or simulation environments for physical AI, this round provides a useful valuation anchor when talking to investors about comparable companies. Stealth and patience paid off for atomic Machines. Atomic Machines emerged from six years of stealth this week with $250 million already raised and a product - the PrimeSwitch PS-150 relay - already shipping to early-access data center customers, as Startup Fortune reported [[2]]. The company, led by Jeff Holden, who built Amazon Prime and later served as Uber's first chief product officer, is working on what it describes as a compiler for matter: manufacturing at molecular scale. The structure of this raise carries a lesson. Six years of stealth and $250 million in capital before a public announcement is not a path most founders can or should follow, but the outcome illustrates how investors at the frontier of deep hardware are willing to wait for proof of shipping product before the world knows a company exists. If you are raising for hardware or manufacturing, investors will increasingly want to see something physical in a customer's hands, not just a prototype in a lab. Quantum computing reaches a Series A milestone. Universal Quantum closed what it describes as the largest Series A ever raised by a quantum computing company - over $100 million - backed by a syndicate that includes sovereign funds, institutional investors, and quantum-specialist funds, as the company announced directly [[4]]. The UK and Germany-based company is focused on trapped-ion systems designed for real-world scale. The sovereign fund participation is a detail founders in deep tech should register. Government-linked capital is increasingly filling the gap at the pre-commercial stage of hardware and science-based startups, where commercial venture capital has historically been reluctant to commit. If your startup sits in quantum, advanced materials, or similarly long-horizon categories, a sovereign or national innovation fund may be a more realistic lead investor than a traditional VC at the Series A stage. This week, if you are raising. * If you are raising in AI agents or robot infrastructure, identify whether Nvidia, Qualcomm Ventures, or Samsung have a strategic investment mandate that aligns with your category - strategic checks from chip companies are now influencing how other institutional investors read a cap table. * Hardware and deep tech founders should treat a shipping product in a customer's facility as the minimum credible proof point before approaching institutional investors, regardless of how early your round is. * If your startup has a long path to commercial revenue, research whether a sovereign wealth fund or national innovation fund operates in your sector, as this week's Universal Quantum round shows they are actively leading rounds that traditional VCs may not. Sources. ai agents robotics deep tech startup funding

The Next Web
Oct 7th, 2026
Atomic Machines emerges with $250M to build micro-machines from code.

Atomic Machines emerges with $250M to build micro-machines from code. Jeff Holden's Atomic Machines spent six years in stealth. Its first device, PrimeSwitch, is a relay for AI data centres that the company says opens in 50 microseconds. October 7, 2026 - 1:15 pm Atomic Machines has come out of six years in stealth with $250M raised. It says its system builds working micro-machines straight from code. The Bay Area start-up announced the launch on Wednesday. Its first product is a power switch for AI data centres. Founder and chief executive Jeff Holden joined Amazon as its tenth engineer and built Amazon Prime. He then became Uber's first chief product officer. There, he set up its self-driving, AI labs and air-taxi units, according to the company. "3D printing made shapes programmable: any geometry, straight from a file. We're making machines programmable," Holden said. What the Matter Compiler does. The company calls its system the Matter Compiler, after a machine in Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age. It says code alone decides which device the system builds. The machines it makes have moving parts, several materials and features down to single-digit microns. No moulds, masks or other fixed tooling are needed. The system measures and corrects every step in real time, and its AI runs its own experiments on the hardware, Atomic Machines said. Targets include gears the size of a grain of sand and robots small enough to work inside the body. Another is cooling built into AI chips. Conventional manufacturing hits its limits at a few tens of microns, the company said. Below that, chipmaking tools take over. Each new device made with them, known as MEMS, needs years of custom process work. Sweden's Silex Microsystems runs a MEMS foundry business of that kind. Holden explains why he started the company in an essay on its website. He compares the system to the ribosome, which builds proteins from a genetic code. The first product. The first device is PrimeSwitch PS-150, a relay that opens in 50 microseconds. The company says that is about 1,000 times faster than a conventional contactor. It carries 150 amps of continuous current. The package measures 9.5mm across and 3mm thick. The switch is meant for AI data centres that are moving to 800-volt direct current. At those voltages, a fault can release destructive energy in microseconds, the company said. Mechanical protection takes milliseconds to open. PrimeSwitch is shipping to early-access customers for evaluation. Atomic Machines did not name them. It will show the switch in public for the first time at the Open Compute Project Global Summit in San Jose, from 12 to 15 October. Data centre power is drawing other start-ups too. Emerald AI raised $150m in August for software that eases the load on grids. Who is backing it. Investors include OneIM, Gigafund, XTX Ventures, KAS Venture Partners, Valor Equity Partners and Sozo Ventures. The Regents of the University of California also invested. The company did not give a valuation or say how the $250M was split across rounds. "If vibe coding is how software gets made now, this is the start of vibe manufacturing," said Luke Nosek, managing partner at Gigafund. In vibe coding, people describe software in plain language and AI writes it. The trend has already produced start-up unicorns.

Antlers American
Oct 7th, 2026
Atomic Machines raises $250M to launch AI-native Matter Compiler for micro-machine manufacturing

Atomic Machines has emerged from stealth with $250 million in funding to launch the Matter Compiler, an AI-native manufacturing system that builds micro-machines directly from code. The company was founded by Jeff Holden, former Amazon senior vice president and Uber's first chief product officer. Investors include OneIM, Gigafund, XTX Ventures, KAS Venture Partners, Valor Equity Partners, Tru Arrow Partners, Construct Capital, Sozo Ventures and the Regents of the University of California. The Matter Compiler produces complete three-dimensional machines with moving parts and features down to single-digit microns, requiring no hard tooling. The system uses AI-driven real-time correction and runs experiments on its own hardware. Its first product, PrimeSwitch, is an electromechanical power relay for 800-volt AI data centre power systems. The device opens in 50 microseconds, roughly a thousand times faster than conventional contactors, and is currently shipping to early-access customers for evaluation.

Manufacturing Tomorrow
Oct 7th, 2026
Atomic Machines emerges from stealth with $250 million to launch the Matter Compiler, an ai-native manufacturing system that builds micro-machines from code.

Atomic Machines emerges from stealth with $250 million to launch the Matter Compiler, an ai-native manufacturing system that builds micro-machines from code. Its first product is PrimeSwitch, a previously unbuildable power relay that opens in microseconds for the 800-volt power systems of AI data centers Atomic Machines today emerged from six years in stealth to introduce the Matter Compiler, the first in a new class of AI-native, all-digital manufacturing systems that build working machines directly from code. The Matter Compiler is aimed at micro-machines: motors and gears the size of a grain of sand, robots small enough to work inside the body, cooling built directly into the chips that run AI, and the many devices like them that have been waiting on a way to build them. The company also announced PrimeSwitch, the first micro-machine produced by the Matter Compiler: an electromechanical power relay that opens in 50 microseconds, about a thousand times faster than a conventional contactor, with no sacrifice in conduction efficiency. More headlines. Articles. Atomic Machines was founded by Jeff Holden, who joined Amazon as its tenth engineer, built Amazon Prime and rose to senior vice president, then became Uber's first chief product officer and founded its self-driving, AI labs and air-taxi divisions. The company has raised $250 million to date from investors including OneIM, Gigafund, XTX Ventures, KAS Venture Partners, Valor Equity Partners, Tru Arrow Partners, Construct Capital, Sozo Ventures and the Regents of the University of California. PrimeSwitch will be shown publicly for the first time at the Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit in San Jose, October 12-15. A gap in how the world makes things Conventional manufacturing (casting, molding, machining) hits its limits in the low tens of microns. Below that, the dominant capability is semiconductor fabrication, built to do one thing extraordinarily well: pattern flat electronic circuits in silicon. The MEMS industry has coaxed about a dozen commercial device categories from that toolset, among them accelerometers, gyroscopes and micro-mirrors, but under the field's own maxim, "one product, one process," each new device class takes years of custom process development. The result is that micro-machines, one of the most promising unexplored frontiers in hardware, have been blocked not by physics but by manufacturing. Two breakthroughs The Matter Compiler brings two breakthroughs to that problem. First, it is a general-purpose constructor: a single system in which code alone determines the device produced, building complete, functional, three-dimensional machines with moving parts, many materials and assembled subsystems, with features down to single-digit microns, and with no hard tooling of any kind. No new manufacturing process has to be engineered for a new device. Second, the entire physical manufacturing system sits inside the AI's loop: every operation is measured with high-precision metrology and corrected in real time, and the AI runs its own experiments on its own hardware to test what simulation proposes. Design intelligence and manufacturing were built together. "3D printing made shapes programmable: any geometry, straight from a file. We're making machines programmable: many materials, moving parts, sealed and wired, straight from a file," said Jeff Holden, founder and CEO of Atomic Machines. "When the marginal cost of a new design is the cost of the design file, you get an innovation explosion, and micro-machines are where that explosion has been waiting to happen." "AI has made it almost trivial to create software: say what you want and it exists. The physical world has not taken that leap, because manufacturing was never built for it. The Matter Compiler will let anyone describe an arbitrary micro-machine in code and get a working device out the other end. If vibe coding is how software gets made now, this is the start of vibe manufacturing. Enabling a world with that kind of creativity and abundance is why Gigafund invested in Atomic Machines," said Luke Nosek, Managing Partner at Gigafund. Rewriting manufacturing economics Manufacturing wisdom holds that flexibility trades against economics: low unit costs come from committing to tooling and a fixed process, and every design change reopens that bill. Because the Matter Compiler requires neither, its flexibility and its economics arise from the same property rather than competing with each other. A lot size of one carries no engineering charge and no process development. At volume, the same fab that builds one design builds any other, so capital is amortized across every product ever run on it. High-mix and high-volume production happen in the very same fab. PrimeSwitch: the first micro-machine out of the Matter Compiler PrimeSwitch was chosen as the company's first product six years ago, from first principles. Power density in electrical systems has risen for a century and will keep rising, and the two technologies for controlling that power each hit a wall. Semiconductors switch fast but lose energy as heat in continuous conduction. Electromechanical relays and contactors conduct almost losslessly and can open a true gap, but they take milliseconds to do it, and at high power they open into an arc. AI data centers, now moving to 800-volt DC distribution to feed racks of unprecedented power density, have made that gap acute: at those voltages a fault delivers destructive energy in microseconds and burns as an arc that direct current will not extinguish on its own. Conventional mechanical protection opens in milliseconds, orders of magnitude too slow, and then has to put out an arc of its own. Solid-state protection is fast and arcless, but a semiconductor cannot provide galvanic isolation, so a mechanical contactor must still sit beside it, and its silicon, cooling and footprint grow with every amp it carries continuously. The industry has seen this coming. Its roadmaps for 800-volt distribution call for protection faster than any mechanical device available today. PrimeSwitch PS-150 is a bistable electromechanical relay that opens in 50 microseconds, with on-resistance of 200 micro-ohms, 1,500 volts of galvanic isolation and a continuous current rating of 150 amps, in a hermetically sealed surface-mount package 9.5 millimeters across and 3 millimeters thick. It holds its state with zero power. Deployed in a hybrid breaker alongside a small solid-state bypass that carries the current for the microseconds the contact is opening, the PS-150 delivers the conduction efficiency and galvanic isolation of a mechanical contact with opening speed in the microseconds regime of solid-state protection, a combination no one had managed to build. The silicon interrupts; the metal carries and isolates; the breaker never arcs. Semiconductor fabs cannot process PrimeSwitch's materials or assemble its moving parts, and no conventional tool can reach its feature sizes. It exists because the Matter Compiler exists. PrimeSwitch PS-150 is currently shipping to early-access customers for evaluation. On the name The Matter Compiler takes its name from Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, in which matter compilers assemble objects atom-by-atom from digital specifications. For further background on Atomic Machines, read Jeff Holden's origin story essay. About Atomic Machines Atomic Machines is building the Matter Compiler, an AI-native, all-digital manufacturing system that builds working micro-machines directly from code, and PrimeSwitch, its first product family. Founded by Jeff Holden, the company has raised $250 million to date. Atomic Machines is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices in Emeryville and Santa Clara. Learn more at atomicmachines.com.

Caplight
Oct 1st, 2026
Atomic Machines Valuation & Funding History | Caplight

Explore Atomic Machines valuation and funding history on Caplight. Research private-market stock with pricing context, where available.