FabONE construction begins: what we’re building and why
Construction at FabONE has begun. After securing the facility, signing our partnership with Exyte, submitting permits, and finalizing the design of the cleanroom and infrastructure, the build is now underway. This milestone marks the next visible phase of FabONE's journey in becoming the world's first 300mm 2D material semiconductor manufacturing facility.
What we’re building and why
FabONE is the first facility in the world designed to integrate electronics and photonics in a single production flow, using graphene.
All this to solve what a trillion-dollar industry cannot engineer around: the physical limits of how chips communicate.
Modern chips are extraordinary and the experience of using AI today reflects that. But a problem emerges at scale when more chips need to communicate simultaneously across longer distances.
Think of chip-to-chip communication like a farm sending apples to a city. The route is a country road—a copper interconnect. Apples could bruise on the journey, so workers add padding to the delivery truck. But padding takes up space, so fewer apples fit.
You trade capacity for distance. Across the meters between chips in a data center, that trade-off compounds fast.
A photonics highway is better. There are no bumps on the highway, which means no need for padding. Apples stack tightly and arrive intact over longer distances. The industry knows the next step is photonics. But what would be best: one system where the highway starts and loads from the trees at the farm, continues to the city, and ends by unloading the apples directly into the fruit display.
That is where graphene comes in.
Graphene handles the conversion between electrical and optical natively, without the external steps other approaches require. It functions as both the modulator converting electrical signals into light, and the photodetector converting light back into electrical signals, from a single material. No intermediate handoffs. No missed deliveries.
This is what FabONE is being built to manufacture: not just a faster, optical road, but an integrated delivery system from tree to display stand in a single, unbroken chain. An electronic, photonic integrated circuit with graphene doing both the modulator and photodetector function natively.
What construction start means for the FabONE timeline
FabONE is being built inside a former automotive hall, a deliberate choice that accelerated our path to breaking ground. Adapting an existing structure for semiconductor manufacturing presented specific engineering requirements: load-bearing capacity for capital equipment, routing of gases, chemicals, and process media through the site, and a cleanroom designed specifically for graphene manufacturing while bringing electronics and photonics into one production flow.
Those requirements have been designed for and resolved. With Exyte as our engineering, procurement, and construction partner, the facility is being built to the same technical standards as the largest fabs in the world. Construction start is another milestone this partnership is delivering.
Looking ahead:
- FabONE construction underway, H1 2026
- Capital equipment installation, H2 2026
- FabONE pilot production begins, 2027
The chip interconnect bottleneck is a constraint limiting what AI infrastructure can do today. FabONE is where the solution becomes manufacturable, and construction has now begun.
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Watch This is FabONE series to learn more
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Episode #2: People & Culture Director Steffi Pieters on Building the Future
Episode #1: CTO Cedric Huyghebaert interview on new headquarters