Belgian- and Silicon Valley-headquartered Swave Photonics, the true holographic display company, has snapped €27 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by investors imec.xpand, which backed INBRAIN Neuroelectronics and Xavveo, and SFPIM Relaunch, with participation from new investors EIC Fund, IAG Capital Partners, and Murata Electronics North America, Inc., and existing investors Qbic Fund, PMV, imec, and Luminate. Swave previously raised a €10 million seed round in 2023.
This investment will catalyse the advancement of its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform, enabling a reality-first user experience for AI-powered augmented reality (AR) smart glasses and heads-up displays.
What challenge does it challenge?
AR devices currently being prototyped or on the market are all faced with challenges of high cost, uncomfortable size and weight, significant power usage, and visual phenomena like Vergence-Accommodation Conflict, which cause nausea or fatigue for users. Swave’s HXR technology solves these issues and eliminates the need for the most costly components, such as waveguides or varifocal lenses, which are required for existing AR devices.
Holographic eXtended Reality Technology
Founded by Theodore Marescaux and Dimitri Choutov in 2021, Swave Photonics conceives, designs, and markets holographic solutions deploying proprietary diffractive photonics and software. Its mission is to breathe life into augmented reality, enabling manufacturers of mobile phones and displays, along with content creators, to revolutionise the visualisation and communication markets with immersive, ultra-high-resolution, lifelike, true holographic displays.
Swave’s HXR technology uses the world’s smallest pixel to shape light and sculpt high-quality 3D holographic images that create a reality-first user experience, where digital information interacts and adapts to the user’s surroundings. The images allow for the human vision system to process them naturally leveraging patented DynamicDepth technology.
“This round will accelerate Swave’s product introductions as we continue to solve the challenges of today’s AR experiences through true holography,” said Mike Noonen, Swave CEO. “We are thrilled with continued support from our existing investors and our new investors. They recognise that Swave uniquely brings together semiconductor, holographic and AI technologies in a way that will deliver cost-effective and truly useful solutions.”
“AR glasses are set to become the primary interface for AI-powered spatial computing and other applications, and Swave is uniquely positioned to enable this future,” said Theo Marescaux, Swave co-founder and Chief Product Officer. “We are co-designing every element—from our holographic SLMs with cutting-edge nano-pixels, to real-time compute chips, light engines, and AR combiners—delivering the most advanced and integrated solution yet.”
“With Swave’s seed funding, we successfully built our team, proved the capabilities of the technology, and completed prototype designs,” said Dmitri Choutov, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer. “With Series A funding secured and silicon running at our partner fabs, we are on track to introduce product development kits and soon thereafter production devices.”
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