Aerogen Systems YC Application

Summer 2026Active

Ann Arbor

Aerogen Systems went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2026 batch as a Industrials company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2026
Industry: Industrials
Location: Ann Arbor
Team size: 4
Status: Active
Launched: 2026

Founders

Noah VogelFounder/CEO
Colin LaveryFounder/CTO

What Aerogen Systems does

We are building the future of chip manufacturing. Chips are more advanced than ever, and the features inside them keep getting smaller. But the cleanroom infrastructure supporting their manufacture has not scaled at the same pace. Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and others spend billions building and operating massive cleanrooms, only to isolate their most advanced wafers from the surrounding facility as much as possible. We think that architecture is backwards. Instead of making the entire building cleaner, why not make the machinery itself as clean as possible? Talos is our proprietary tool-integrated purification system. It sits directly inside semiconductor equipment and continuously destroys airborne molecular contaminants before they reach the wafer. Instead of fighting contamination by constantly flooding tools with ultra-high-purity nitrogen, Talos keeps the environment inside the machine 10 - 100x cleaner, without the massive purge-gas bill. Talos is powerful on its own, but it is also the foundation for a much bigger vision: the Cleanpipe. The Aerogen Systems Cleanpipe is an ultra-clean interconnect infrastructure that protects wafers as they move from machine to machine across the fab. Rather than relying on a billion-dollar cleanroom to protect every cubic foot of factory space, Cleanpipe creates a controlled environment only where cleanliness actually matters: around the wafer. Talos cleans the tools. Cleanpipe connects them. Eventually, we delete the cleanroom and build more advanced chips, at greater scale, with radically less infrastructure. With cleanpipes connecting tools, chip fabs can exist anywhere.

Aerogen Systems's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Aerogen Systems, Summer 2026 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Aerogen Systems

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Modernizing Chip Manufacturing Infrastructure

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We build hardware for semiconductor fabs. Our main product, Talos, is a purification system that sits inside chip manufacturing machines and destroys airborne molecular contaminants before they can ruin wafers. We're also developing Cleanpipe: a wafer transfer infrastructure that keeps wafers ultra-clean as they move between tools. Our vision is to radically shrink the role of the cleanroom so fabs can build more advanced chips anywhere, with less overhead.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We are based in Ann Arbor, MI, and the company would stay here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

Ann Arbor has the specialized technical talent and resources we need for hard tech and manufacturing. Staying grounded here lets us build and test hardware, work with local suppliers, and be close to future talent.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Aerogen Systems YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Aerogen Systems's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Aerogen Systems would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.