InnoSuisse, the Swiss Innovation Agency, has awarded Lightium a 2.67 million CHF (£2.3 million) grant. This highly competitive grant, one of the largest non-dilutive fundings available to startups in Switzerland, will accelerate the commercialisation of Lightium’s proprietary Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) platform.
“The support from InnoSuisse is not just a financial boost but a validation of our technology’s pivotal role in shaping the future of data communications and energy efficiency,” says Dr Amir Ghadimi, CEO and Co-Founder of Lightium. “Additionally, the versatile nature of our TFLN platform extends its benefits to other applications and markets such as satellite communication, quantum computing, and LIDAR applications, making our open-access foundry model ideally suited to meet diverse technological needs across these sectors."
This advancement is critical for Europe’s strategic autonomy in next-gen photonic technologies, particularly benefiting the telecommunication and data centre sectors amid escalating demands for higher data rates and energy efficiency. Lightium aims to open beta access to its foundry services in Q4 2024, with capabilities ranging from rapid prototyping to volume production.
Data centres are the backbone of our digital economy and face growing challenges due to skyrocketing data volumes and energy consumption fueled by the rise of AI and large language models like ChatGPT. Lightium's TFLN platform addresses these issues by increasing communication bandwidth while substantially reducing power requirements.
Lightium will use the InnoSuisse funds to transfer its manufacturing process to a commercial CMOS fab, enabling volume production. This will make Lightium the first production-capable player in Europe for TFLN, securing the continent's strategic independence for the next generation of photonic devices.
Lightium’s TFLN platform is poised to set new industry standards with capabilities to support data transmission speeds exceeding 1.6 Tb/s and power consumption rates significantly lower than current technologies.
Looking ahead, Lightium has a clear roadmap for the next nine months. The company will collaborate closely with its partners to optimise its PIC manufacturing process and fine-tune the specifications of its process design kit (PDK), the building blocks library of its platform. This intensive phase will be followed by a significant milestone- the opening of beta access to its TFLN platform by the end of 2024. This step marks a crucial stage in Lightium's journey towards commercialisation and underscores its commitment to delivering cutting-edge photonic solutions.
Lightium is a Swiss startup offering Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) foundry, design, and packaging services based on its proprietary Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) platform. Lightium's solution addresses the complex challenges faced by photonic device manufacturers, offering them unmatched photonic performance, a simplified and cost-effective supply chain, and rapid scale-up capabilities from prototyping to large-volume manufacturing. As Europe's first production-grade TFLN foundry, Lightium enables the next generation of photonic solutions in a wide range of industries, including Telecom, Datacom, Quantum Computing, AI, and Space.
