Cambridge-based Wave Photonics, a deeptech startup, announced that it has secured £4.5M (approximately €5.32M) in a seed round of funding to develop on-chip photonics designs for quantum technologies, sensors, and data centre applications.
The round was led by the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund and Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, with contributions from Redstone QAI Quantum Fund, Kyra Ventures, Parkwalk’s University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund IX (UCEF IX), and Deep Tech Labs.
The round was complemented by non-dilutive funding from EIC and Innovate UK grants, bringing the company’s total funding to £5.4M.
Dr. Christine Martin, Head of Ventures at Cambridge Enterprise, says, “Cambridge Enterprise Ventures is pleased to follow our initial pre-seed investment and co-lead Wave Photonics’ seed round with UKI2S.”
“Integrated photonics is poised to disrupt high-value industries ranging from quantum computing to bio-sensing, and Wave Photonics’ team and technologies are in a great position to enable and accelerate the adoption of next-generation integrated photonics products.”
Accelerating integrated photonics
Integrated photonics uses scalable semiconductor processes to create light-based circuits for efficient communications, healthcare sensors, diagnostics, optical processors, lidar, and quantum technologies.
Unlike mature semiconductor chip processes, developing photonic integrated circuits (PICs) from concept to mass production is lengthy and costly. This is where Wave Photonics looks to make a difference.
Wave Photonics has developed and validated its core computational photonics design technology to shorten photonic product development time.
The company aims to unlock valuable photonics markets by transforming the inefficient and fragmented productisation cycle into an integrated and rapid process, similar to modern semiconductor development.
Wave Photonics was founded in 2021 by James Lee and Matthew Anderson, both Cambridge Quantum Photonics PhDs, and Mateusz Kubica, a former VP in quantitative finance with a decade of experience in mathematical and computational modeling.
Capital utilisation
The funds will help Wave Photonics to transition its technology from a research manufacturing line to a commercial foundry, focusing on solutions for frontier applications like quantum technologies and biosensing.
Co-founder &CEO, Lee, says, “The team has spent the past few years building and experimentally validating our design technology – it’s exciting to have the resources to begin deploying it to solve real industry problems.”
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