MicroAlign, a spin-off from the Eindhoven University of Technology, has closed a €1 million seed funding to accelerate the commercialization of high-accuracy fiber arrays. The Dutch venture capital firms DeepTechXL and PhotonVentures led the funding round, reflecting investors’ belief in the company’s vision to develop a unique and crucial product for the photonics industry.
This investment accelerates MicroAlign’s path to market and product development by expanding the R&D team and facilities. Their technology will benefit the world of quantum photonic computing, data communication, and AI computing by providing an interconnection component that reduces the system energy consumption and improves the related functionality performance. With the developed technology, MicroAlign will support the photonics-based industries to take the next steps further toward achieving pivotal society development goals ranging from climate action, and digitalization, to industrial optimization.
Marco Fattori, the CTO of MicroAlign, says this technology is based on the smallest fiber alignment actuator in the world and represents a groundbreaking solution for the industry. “Over the past three years, MicroAlign has developed technology to manipulate optical fibers with unmatched precision, generating already four patents describing revolutionary approaches in the critical optical fiber alignment operation.”
Even though several photonics-based markets can benefit from MicroAlign’s technology, quantum photonic computing represents the field that most urgently needs such a fiber array technology to be developed. CEO Simone Cardarelli: “MicroAlign’s fiber array product is a key enabling technology for quantum photonic computing applications, where every photon counts in the fiber-to-chip connection. Exponential benefits in quantum computing efficiency can be achieved with a high-accuracy fiber array component. At the same time, the technology trends driven by the growing demands for data traffic and AI computing show that low-loss optical interconnections are increasingly a point of concern, opening a huge application opportunity for MicroAlign soon.”
PhotonVentures General Partner Ewit Roos said that MicroAlign is the only company in Europe that has proven to meet the stringent requirements for fiber alignment in the demanding quantum photonic computing domain. “With their excellent technology and the continuous focus on customer needs and delivery, I am convinced the MicroAlign team is ready to successfully facilitate the growth of this industry and other sectors that require ultra-low loss fiber coupling solutions.”
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