MicroAlign closes seed funding round

The Dutch startup MicroAlign secures a 1 million EUR seed investment to enable efficient interconnections in Quantum Photonic Computers.

EINDHOVEN, The Netherlands, 5 June 2024 – MicroAlign, a spin-off from the Eindhoven University of Technology, announced today that it has closed €1 million in seed-funding to accelerate the commercialisation of high-accuracy fibre arrays. The funding round was led by the Dutch venture capital firms DeepTechXL and PhotonVentures, reflecting investors’ strong belief in the company’s vision to develop a unique and crucial product for the photonics industry.

This investment accelerates MicroAlign’s path to market and product development by expanding the R&D team and facilities. Their technology will benefit the world of quantum photonic computing, data communication, and AI computing by providing an interconnection component that reduces system energy consumption and improves related functionality performance. With the developed technology, MicroAlign will support the photonics-based industries to take the next steps further towards achieving pivotal social development goals ranging from climate action and digitalization to industrial optimisation.

Marco Fattori, the CTO of MicroAlign, explains the uniqueness of such a technology: “Over the past three years, MicroAlign has developed technology to manipulate optical fibres with unmatched precision, generating already four patents describing revolutionary approaches in the critical optical fibre alignment operation. This technology is based on the smallest fibre alignment actuator in the world and represents a groundbreaking solution for the industry. We are currently laser-sharply focused on developing our technology further to realise ultra-high-accuracy fibre arrays.”

Even though several photonics-based markets can benefit from MicroAlign’s technology, quantum photonic computing represents the field that most urgently needs such a fibre array technology to be developed. The CEO, Simone Cardarelli, explains how MicroAlign can support quantum photonic computing development: “MicroAlign’s fibre array product is a key enabling technology for quantum photonic computing applications, where every photon counts in the fibre-to-chip connection. Exponential benefits in quantum computing efficiency can indeed be achieved with a high-accuracy fibre array component. At the same time, the technology trends driven by the growing demands for data traffic and AI computing show that low-loss optical interconnections are more and more a point of concern, opening a huge application opportunity for MicroAlign in the near future. We would like to sincerely thank our customers, stakeholders, partners, and suppliers who believe in us and are supporting MicroAlign in the next exciting phase!”

Aligned with the industrial and societal motivation of the company, the managing partner at DeepTechXL, Teska van Vuren, states the investment firm’s vision and goal: ”DeepTechXL shares MicroAlign’s vision to make an impact by solving one of the main technical bottlenecks for quantum photonic computers. DeepTechXL will support MicroAlign in scaling up and becoming the number one in low coupling loss fibre arrays.”

Vision, technology, and business development goals will be achieved by a dedicated and strong team, as reported by a quote from the General Partner at PhotonVentures, Ewit Roos: “MicroAlign is the only company in Europe that has proven to meet the stringent requirements for fibre alignment in the still small but promising and already very demanding quantum photonic computing domain. With their excellent technology and the continuous focus on customer needs and delivery, I am convinced this MicroAlign team is ready to facilitate successfully the growth of this industry and other sectors that require ultra-low-loss fibre coupling solutions.’’