GLS Launches First Innovation Funnel™ Project on its Great American ChipForge™ Platform

FISHKILL, N.Y., Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Lakes Semiconductor (GLS) today announced the first project on its Great American ChipForge™ platform, launched under the company's Innovation Funnel™ initiative. The project draws on multiple GLS design centers, ChipForge^TM modular wafer fabrication, and FINPAT™ packaging and test, demonstrating the company's distributed, end-to-end integration capabilities in response to strong industry demand for intelligent, AI-enabled sensor solutions for vehicle applications.

GLS is collaborating with ecosystem partners across the full project: Neitas and Daikin of Japan on modular fab equipment; BlueDot Ventures, a low-energy sensor specialist whose companies have placed more than one million sensors into commercial service; FMC, an innovator in ferroelectric semiconductor memory; Altascient, which contributes predictive-intelligence-based planning; and Advanced Printed Electronic Solutions (APES), an additive electronics design and platform systems company. Within the FINPAT™ platform, APES will develop a foundational, additively manufactured package substrate that enables direct heterogeneous packaging of GLS and FMC semiconductors together with multiple sensor devices from BlueDot Ventures.

Innovation Funnel Benefits from Integrated Technology and Manufacturing Capabilities

According to Dr. Richard Thurston, Chairman & CEO of GLS, the launch of this Innovation Funnel^TM project will demonstrate the seamless end-to-end integration of the ChipForge^TM ecosystem and the value of the Innovation Funnel^TM as a key enabler, where integrated technology and manufacturing capabilities accelerate time-to-market for new products. "We start with innovative concepts at our design centers and quickly turn them into fully packaged prototypes that are ready for production scale," said Dr. Thurston. "That is possible because the technology blueprints for our manufacturing processes, and for the transition to production scale, are aligned from the start."

Flexible and Modular Wafer Fabrication Technology Supports Multiple Semiconductor Devices

At the center of the GLS manufacturing model is ChipForge™, a flexible and modular wafer-fabrication platform designed to support multiple semiconductor processes, materials, device architectures and design rules. Its modular configuration enables individual production lines to be tailored for distinct applications, including memory, logic, processors, sensors, power devices and other specialized products serving the automotive, defense, space, healthcare, communications and industrial sectors.

ChipForge™ combines best-in-class fabrication equipment and process technologies whose underlying toolsets and production capabilities have been field-proven across billions of manufactured semiconductor devices. Its configurable architecture allows new process modules, materials and device technologies to be introduced without requiring the wholesale redesign of an entire conventional fabrication facility. This provides customers with a faster and more accessible path from research and device development through prototyping, qualification and commercial production. Dr. Thurston, also an IP specialist, has created a unique, proprietary IP platform that allows active customer collaboration and engagement.

Through collaborations with APES and other semiconductor industry participants, GLS intends to connect multiple specialized production lines within a unified, distributed semiconductor manufacturing platform. Each participating line can retain its own technical specialization while operating within a coordinated ecosystem for process development, manufacturing, packaging, testing and supply-chain support.

This differentiated fabrication model provides the manufacturing engine beneath the GLS Innovation Funnel™, helping move promising technologies from university and corporate research laboratories into prototype fabrication, pilot production and qualified commercial products. Wherever appropriate, processes developed and validated within ChipForge™ will be designed for compatibility and transfer to the high-volume manufacturing facilities of GLS strategic foundry partners. The result is an integrated pathway from innovation to scalable production, without requiring every emerging technology or customer to begin inside a large, high-volume semiconductor fab.

ChipForge™ Advancing Sensor Design and Applications

BlueDot Ventures contributes the sensor devices that FINPAT™ will integrate alongside GLS and FMC silicon, drawn from product families already in service across commercial vehicle fleets. "BlueDot has more than one million sensors deployed into the field, and that has taught us that power, size, cost and reliability ultimately determine what makes a practical and therefore successful product," said Michael Sklansky, Chief Executive Officer of BlueDot. "With our collaboration partners we can take what we have learned at the system level and apply it much closer to the silicon, integrating sensing, communications and processing in ways that further reduce power and size. Just as importantly, the ability to prototype and iterate quickly inside the ChipForge™ ecosystem means we can move from a customer requirement to a working solution far faster than is possible today."

Innovation Funnel: Design Center to Heterogeneous Packaging

Dr. Rich Neill, CEO of APES, explained that the Innovation Funnel™ project brings together a high-value, manufacturable-at-scale application solution, with contributions from every level of the ChipForge™ ecosystem. "At the Fishkill, NY design center, APES is working with BlueDot Ventures on substrate designs that embed energy harvesting, supercapacitor, and printed electronics technologies, fully integrated and manufactured entirely by additive processes," said Dr. Neill. "The goal is a reusable power module package that supports multiple semiconductor and sensor combinations and can be configured parametrically at any design center. FINPAT™ facilities will then manufacture the complete packaged devices, combining GLS power management and low-power RISC-V processor chips with FMC memory to drive multiple BlueDot sensor technologies."

"What's most exciting is that once the platform is qualified, engineers and researchers will be able to change design parameters and, through the GLS digital manufacturing process, turn around completely new prototypes without developing new processes, design rules, or materials," Dr. Neill added. "I expect GLS design center engineers following a heterogeneous packaging approach to co-package FMC memory tightly with a GLS-optimized RISC-V core running an energy-efficient machine learning classifier. That would enable a new class of sensor devices with power-efficient AI processing, because the FMC memory chiplet retains learned model data with negligible power draw while the processor sleeps."

About Great Lakes Semiconductor
Great Lakes Semiconductor (GLS), co-founded by Dr. Richard L. Thurston and Jim Bark, is headquartered in Fishkill, NY. Once fully operational, GLS will be an integrated device manufacturer (IDM) and foundry focused on developing world-class semiconductor fabrication facilities, front-end to back-end integration, and a technology park ecosystem that addresses critical needs in North America's semiconductor industry.

GLS's initial activities will include research, design, and development of chips, chipsets, and MEMS and sensor devices; modular equipment and additive manufactured electronics (AME) and 3D packaging; workforce development; a PocketFab^TM facility for prototype and small-lot production; and a new, state-of-the-art, full-scale 200mm chip manufacturing facility. In collaboration with strategic partners such as Japan's Neitas and Daikin, and through facilities co-located with APES, GLS will focus on expanding and securing North America's semiconductor supply chain. To learn more, visit https://greatlakessemiconductor.com/.

Media Contact:
Dr. Richard L. Thurston
718-213-3415
[email protected] 

SOURCE Great Lakes Semiconductor