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Onto Innovation makes the inspection and measurement machines that computer chip factories use to check their work.
Onto Innovation builds the quality-control equipment inside chip factories. When a factory is making advanced chips or the packages that hold them, tiny mistakes can ruin an entire batch worth millions of dollars. Onto's machines look at wafers and packaged chips to measure whether everything came out the right size, shape, and quality, catching problems before bad product moves down the line.
The company sells two main kinds of tools. One group inspects and measures wafers during manufacturing, checking things like film thickness and pattern accuracy. The other group, which came largely from its 2019 merger with Rudolph Technologies, handles packaging and inspection for advanced chip assembly. Its customers are the world's big chipmakers and packaging firms, mostly in Asia, who buy these tools because a single defect caught early saves far more than the machine costs. The business has been on a strong run. Demand for advanced packaging — the technology that stitches chips together for AI and high-performance computing — has become a major growth driver, and Onto has pushed into that area with new products. In early 2025 it agreed to acquire Lithoglas, a German firm specializing in thin-film coatings for semiconductor packaging, extending its reach into that fast-growing niche. Revenue for 2024 was roughly $987 million, up sharply from the prior year. Onto keeps its balance sheet simple, with little debt and plenty of cash, and it has used buybacks to shrink its share count. The catch is that chip equipment is a cyclical business: when chipmakers pause their spending, orders dry up fast. Onto's edge rests on being one of a small number of firms that can do this highly technical inspection work, but its fortunes still rise and fall with the chip industry's mood swings.
Saved answer · last researched 21 Oct 2026
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