Morphotonics Secures €40 Million to Expand Optical Component Manufacturing
The Netherlands-based Morphotonics, which uses nanolithography for manufacturing AR smart glasses, has secured €40 million in a follow-on fundraising round led by 3M Ventures, Innovation Industries, and the European Investment Bank.
The funding would help Morphotonics ramp up its production capacity of large-scale nanoimprint lithography systems to expand the supply chain of AR smart glasses, besides moving into the data center optical market. The Veldhoven-headquartered company designs roll-to-plate nanoimprint lithography equipment used to imprint optical patterns on glass plates.
The technology helps manufacture efficient waveguides that are key components required to project digital images into the field of vision in the AR glasses, including Meta Ray-Ban and Magic Leap glasses. Morphotonics’ technology is also being used in making manufacturing stamps to co-package optics for light-based data communication between servers within data centers.
Under the leadership of CEO Hugo Da Silva, Morphotonics has expanded its team twice to 60 people while their revenue has increased thrice year-on-year. This investment will be used to introduce the next generation Cypris X700 platform that can produce more than 6 million waveguides per year.
With 10-15 industrial machines in operation worldwide at the moment, the company plans to expand to 50 machines in the next three years to address growing consumer demand.
This funding indicates a change in strategy in favor of physical optical infrastructure because the shift from screen-based computing to spatial computing with AI requires high-density data centers. Overcoming bottlenecks in production of optical components is crucial for the scalability of next-gen hardware ecosystem on a global scale.
