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07 Jan 2025
imec co-leads latest investment round for its spin-out working to advance augmented reality glasses.
Swave Photonics, the Belgian startup company developing holographic technology intended to improve the experience of wearing augmented and extended reality (AR/XR) smart glasses, says it has raised €27 million in a series A round of funding.
The latest financial support follows the Leuven-based firm’s €10 million seed round, and was co-led by the venture wing of the influential electronics research center imec, the institution where Swave's technology originated before its 2022 spin-out.
Swave says that the new cash will “catalyze” the advancement of its holographic approach to AR smart glasses, including spatial light modulators (SLMs) featuring tiny pixels, light engines, and AR combiners.
The idea is to overcome the various challenges still faced by AR glasses, such as their high cost, uncomfortable size and weight, and power consumption. The technology also promises to beat the problematic vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC), which induces nausea or fatigue in many AR wearers, by enabling the human vision system to process images naturally.
“Swave’s unique HXR [holographic extended reality] technology not only solves these issues, but also eliminates the need for the most costly components, such as waveguides or varifocal lenses, inherently required for existing AR devices, enabling a reality-first user experience for AI-powered AR smart glasses and head-up displays,” claims the firm.
‘True holography’
Commenting on the latest round Swave’s CEO Mike Noonen said: “This round will accelerate Swave’s product introductions as we continue to solve the challenges of today’s AR experiences through true holography.
“We are thrilled with continued support from our existing investors and our new investors. They recognize that Swave uniquely brings together semiconductor, holographic and AI technologies in a way that will deliver cost-effective and truly useful solutions.”
Company co-founder Theo Marescaux, who is now “chief product officer”, added: “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.
“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.”
COO Dmitri Choutov, another co-founder, noted: “With Swave’s seed funding, we successfully built our team, proved the capabilities of the technology, and completed prototype designs.
“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.”
The latest funding comes a few months after Swave’s hiring of Joel Kollin as the firm’s director of optical architecture. Kollin, who previously worked for Microsoft on the optical technology that was adopted in the HoloLens 2 virtual reality headset, is tasked with implementing Swave’s waveguide-free technology to deliver the best user experience in spatial computing and immersive displays.
Aside from imec.xpand, the series A support was co-led by SFPIM Relaunch, part of the Belgian sovereign wealth fund, alongside participation from Europe’s EIC Fund, venture outfit IAG Capital Partners, and the North American subsidiary of Japan’s Murata Electronics.
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