WILMINGTON, Mass. — Onto Innovation Inc. announced a strategic collaboration with X-ray technology company Rigaku Holdings Corporation aimed at advancing next-generation process control solutions for semiconductor manufacturing.
The partnership comes as increasing complexity in advanced logic and memory design, along with evolving packaging architectures, drives demand for new materials and more sophisticated metrology tools. The companies said the collaboration will combine Onto Innovation’s Ai Diffract analysis software with Rigaku’s critical dimension small-angle X-ray scattering platforms to deliver enhanced measurement capabilities.
The joint solution has already been selected by two customers and targets a market that analysts estimate could exceed $1 billion within five years. The companies said the combined approach allows customers to integrate optical metrology data with X-ray precision, particularly for analyzing deeper semiconductor structures.
“Demand for Onto Innovation’s Atlas OCD technology continues to increase as the adoption of optical metrology moves into the 1nm process technology node. Working closely with our customers, we see additional value in the insights X-ray technology can provide,” said Mike Plisinski, chief executive officer of Onto Innovation. “Onto Innovation and Rigaku are currently demonstrating compelling results to customers, giving them the ability to aggregate and correlate data across platforms—pairing the speed and location information of OCD with the precision of X-ray, particularly for deeper structures.”
“Rigaku has developed a broad set of powerful X-ray solutions and components over its 75-year history. Our systems are used in a variety of applications in industrial and scientific applications including a growing opportunity in semiconductors,” said Jun Kawakami, chief executive officer of Rigaku. “Our collaboration with Onto Innovation has been positive, benefiting customers by combining the strengths of both Rigaku and Onto Innovation in service to the customer.”
As part of the expanding relationship, Onto Innovation has agreed to acquire a 27 percent stake in Rigaku from an affiliate of The Carlyle Group for approximately $710 million. The company will gain the right to nominate one director to Rigaku’s board but said it will not consolidate Rigaku’s financial results.
Onto Innovation expects the investment to be accretive by the end of 2026 and said the move is intended to deepen strategic alignment, accelerate joint intellectual property development, and support a coordinated go-to-market strategy focused on advanced logic and memory applications.
The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.
