Insider Brief
- EMode Photonix raised $1 million in pre-seed funding led by Ground State Ventures, with participation from Harlow Capital Management, to expand its photonics simulation software business.
- The company says its software simulates nonlinear photonic circuits 1,000 times faster, helping engineers design devices for frequency conversion and quantum light generation.
- The Boulder-based startup will use the funding to expand product development and sales as it prepares an enterprise offering for complete photonic integrated circuit design.
PRESS RELEASE — EMode Photonix (EMode, Inc.), a startup delivering powerful simulation tools to allow novel photonics technologies for quantum computers to be developed faster, has raised a $1 million pre-seed round. The round was led by Ground State Ventures, with participation from Harlow Capital Management.
Integrated photonics is one of the fastest growing and most exciting areas of technology currently. Traditionally developed for telecommunications, it is finding increasing use in sensing, computing (see Nvidia investing billions in partnerships with photonics companies to replace copper wire), and especially quantum technologies.
Traditionally photonics engineers could rely on existing simulations of linear photonics, which is sufficient for simple light routing circuits. However, the next generation of photonic devices exploit non-linear photonics, which not only allows one to bridge and generate different frequencies of light, but even enables the conversion of classical to quantum light.
Up until now, there haven’t been any efficient tools for simulating non-linear photonics. EMode Photonix has developed a unique simulation stack, based on proprietary computational techniques, that speeds up the simulation of non-linear photonic circuits by 1,000x.
The technology has the greatest potential in the emerging field of quantum computing, explains CEO Eric Stanton:
“Nearly every quantum computing platform relies on light at precisely defined frequencies. Trapped ions, neutral atoms, and solid-state emitters need lasers tuned to specific optical transitions, and networking superconducting or spin qubits requires converting their signals to optical wavelengths that travel efficiently in fiber. Our software lets engineers design the nonlinear devices that shift light to exactly the frequencies these systems require.
“Photonic quantum computers go a step further and encode quantum information in light itself. The same nonlinear processes are used to generate entangled photon pairs and squeezed light, which are key resources for fault-tolerant photonic architectures, and EMode lets engineers design and optimize those sources on chip.
“We’re excited to be building a foundational tool for the next generation of photonic engineering and technology.”
EMode Photonix’s advanced photonics simulation software is specifically designed to model and optimize complex light transformations. The software incorporates newly derived equations for frequency conversion together with other physics like thermal and RF, enabling engineers to design devices that transform light from one color to another, or from classical light into quantum light.
EMode Photonix was co-founded by Eric and Maiya Stanton. Eric previously researched photonics at UC Santa Barbara, NIST, and University of Colorado Boulder. Based in Boulder, a stone’s throw from the R&D facilities of several major quantum computing companies, they are in prime position to fuel the development of new quantum infrastructure.
Having successfully commercialized its software for use in research labs, the company is now preparing an enterprise offering that will allow complete photonic integrated circuit design in a single day, to support the burgeoning market for quantum computer development.
Kris Kaczmarek, Partner at Ground State Ventures, says:
“EMode Photonix is well positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for photonics tooling required by quantum computing companies, regardless of the modality they use. With a truly unique approach to their product that supports a much larger variety of devices and materials than existing alternatives, we’re proud to back Eric, Maiya, and their team as they bring their software to the enterprise market.”
The new funds will be used to scale product development and sales, following the recent release of the company’s nonlinear-EME product, the first version of a tool that natively supports chi(2) nonlinearities for frequency conversion design and optimization leveraging sum and difference frequency generation.