Beam shaping startup Midel Photonics gains €1 million in seed funding

20 Dec 2023

Its targeted shaping of laser beams is “increasingly important” in manufacturing.

Bonn, Germany-based laser start-up Midel Photonics has announced that it has gained € 1 million seed funding, with investors including High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and renowned industry experts Thomas Merk and Dr. Markus Dilger.

Dr. David Dung, co-founder and CEO of Midel commented, “We are thrilled to have such strong and technology-savvy partners supporting our vision and work.”

Founded in 2022, Midel Photonics is focused on the laser materials processing sector. The company states: “in key areas such as cutting microchips, welding engines and batteries for electromobility and display manufacturing, current laser technologies are reaching their limits, leading to inefficient production processes and wasted resources.”

Beaming smiles

Midel is offering a novel technology that shapes laser beams to significantly enhance the efficiency of existing processes while paving the way for new manufacturing processes. The company says it is “working towards a more sustainable and intelligent manufacturing future.”

Frederik Wolf, co-founder and CEO of Midel, continued, “With this investment we can now realize our growth plans and establish our breakthrough technology even more broadly in the market. Midel Photonics is ready to actively shape the future of the laser industry.”

Dr. Nils Lang, Investment Manager at HTGF, commented, “Midel has developed a ground-breaking beam shaping solution that can propel laser applications to the next level.”

Thomas Merk, former president and CEO of Rofin Sinar, and Executive VP at Coherent, said, “The most important topic of laser processes is the application result. Midel’s technology enlarges the process window significantly and provides a more sustainable quality of laser applications. Midel can provide these stabilizing optics specific to their customers’ applications on short delivery.”

Midel Photonics was founded in May 2022 and emerged from research in the “ML4Q” Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bonn. With its innovative laser beam shaping technology, the company solves highly topical problems in laser material processing and enables highly efficient laser systems.

The company founders were supported by EXIST research transfer funding from the BMWK, NRW.BANK, the High-Tech.NRW network, the enaCom transfer center at the University of Bonn and the RWTH Aachen incubation program.