COHORT 9
Engineering high-powered lasers you can hold
AB Photonics enables manufacturers to commercialize next-generation scientific instruments once thought impossible. Its hand-held, mode-locked pulsed lasers eliminate the bulk, cost, and supply-chain complexity that have long blocked OEM adoption. The result is a scalable, user-friendly laser platform that enables equipment manufacturers and researchers to integrate high-performance pulsed lasers into commercial products for the first time.
Putting high-performance lasers on a chip
Brightlight Photonics is shrinking Titanium:sapphire (Ti:sapphire) lasers—valued for their power, precision, and broad color range—from tabletop systems to photonic chips. Its compact, scalable platform gives quantum technology developers a simpler way to generate the multiple laser wavelengths needed to control and read out quantum systems. The technology also has potential applications in semiconductor chip inspection, advanced biomedical imaging, and chemical spectroscopy.
Bringing image-based precision to labor monitoring
Ciconia Medical is transforming labor assessment with ILARA, the first AI-based imaging platform designed to replace invasive, often painful, subjective vaginal exams with safe, gentle, and accurate cervical and fetal measurements. By giving care teams a clear and accurate picture of labor progress, with consistent measurement and documentation in real time at the bedside, ILARA aims to support better-informed labor decisions, reduce unnecessary repeat examinations, and improve patient experience and outcomes.
Making diamond practical for next-generation electronics, optics, and AI infrastructure
Diamond Quanta is building the manufacturing infrastructure to standardize semiconductor-compatible engineered diamond integration. Its proprietary Adamantine Platform™ enables engineered diamond interfaces within existing manufacturing workflows, addressing critical constraints in heat dissipation, optical performance, and durability. Initial applications span AI infrastructure, advanced packaging, consumer electronics, photonics, power electronics, and quantum systems.
Bringing real-time chemical insight to industrial production
Gekko Photonics is replacing delayed lab testing with autonomous photonic systems for real-time chemical process monitoring, quality control, and industrial production optimization. Its Raman-based Spectrally™ analyzers combine proprietary photonic hardware with AI-driven chemometric software to measure composition directly in reactors, pipelines, and production lines. This enables faster, data-driven decisions that improve yield, reduce waste, and stabilize quality across chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, and other process industries.
Restoring human-scale vision for remote and simulated environments
Hypervision develops ultra-wide-field visual systems that restore the natural peripheral awareness often lost in conventional head-mounted displays and remote-operator interfaces. Its patented optics create a continuous, human-scale view that helps users better perceive depth, scale, and activity across their field of vision. The platform supports advanced simulation, digital day/night vision, and remote operation of autonomous systems in defense, public safety, industrial, and other high-stakes environments.
Making complex optics in fewer steps
Manifest Technologies is modernizing optical manufacturing with its patented Parallax Volumetric Additive Manufacturing (P-VAM) platform, which uses computed light fields to form complex parts all at once rather than layer by layer. By integrating optical, mechanical, and electronic features directly onto or into lenses, the platform reduces assembly steps and enables thinner, lighter smart lenses for augmented reality and other advanced applications.
Clearing the blind spot inside advanced chips
Modendo is bringing high-resolution optical inspection to places conventional microscopes cannot reach. Its flexible fiber-optic probes—thinner than a single strand of human hair—carry laser light through microscopic access points to inspect and analyze buried features inside advanced semiconductor packages. The platform gives chipmakers and failure-analysis teams a minimal-prep way to locate defects, preserve evidence, and speed root-cause analysis in next-generation devices.
Advancing bioprocess monitoring with real-time molecular insight
Phlotonics is giving bioprocess teams a live view of the cellular factories that determine if drug production succeeds or fails. Its BioproSense™ system uses silicon photonic sensors to continuously measure multiple molecular markers from a single sample, replacing slow offline testing with real-time visibility. The platform helps manufacturers detect cell stress sooner, protect product yield, and make in-process decisions across biomanufacturing, cell and gene therapy, and drug discovery.
Reimagining augmented reality displays with wavemixing physics
Smith Displays is transforming AR glasses with a new approach that can turn lenses into bright, fully transparent digital displays. Its patented wavemixing technology changes the physics of how light behaves inside the lens, solving the brightness, clarity, privacy, and power constraints of traditional diffractive and reflective optics. The technology enables lightweight smart glasses that are outdoor-readable and have all-day battery life across consumer, industrial, healthcare, and security applications.