The brief

Analyst view

• Second-gen photonic NPU running at the LRZ and Jülich supercomputing centres; IONOS first commercial buyer (May 2026).
• Raised €62M Series A in July 2025, Europe's largest for photonic computing.
• Opened a US headquarters in Austin in April 2026.

Technical approach

As reported

Material

Thin-film lithium niobate

Its chips use thin-film lithium niobate, a crystal whose optical properties change fast with voltage, to shape light on chip.

Analog

Maths done by light itself

Its LENA architecture performs operations such as multiplications on light signals directly, as analog co-processing, rather than switching transistors.

Fab

Own pilot line

Chips come from a pilot line run with IMS CHIPS in Stuttgart; it plans US manufacturing as it scales.