Lumicore closes $100 M Series A; NY CREATES, Fraunhofer Strengthen Cooperation: Week in Brief: 2/9/24

Representatives from the New York Center for Research, Economic Advancement, Technology, Engineering, and Science (NY CREATES) visited the Fraunhofer Institute in Dresden, Germany to set concrete dates for a joint exchange in 2024. The meeting follows last year's signing of a memorandum of understanding between NY CREATES and the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems to collaborate on joint research projects, symposia, and workshops as well as promoting scientific exchanges.

From top: Lumicore’s production base in Nanjing, China and the company’s 1.32-in. micro-OLED. Courtesy of Lumicore.

SHANGHAI — Micro-OLED display manufacturer Lumicore has closed a Series A funding round worth $100 million to help raise display quality specifications of OLED based mixed reality headsets. The company is currently developing a low-cost 4K micro-OLED display.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — NUBURU, Inc., a developer of industrial blue laser technology, has engaged Northland Capital Markets as its financial advisor in connection with its evaluation of strategic alternatives. The company will assess a range of options, including a sale, merger, divestiture, recapitalization, going private transaction, and additional financing among other transactions. NUBURU has not yet set a timetable for when a decision will be made. The enlistment of a financial advisor follows NUBURU's receipt of a deficiency letter from the NYSE last month. The company was given a deadline of June 28 to demonstrate sustained price improvement.

Concept art of Fibertek’s electricity and optical communication transmissions with a LION terminal. Courtesy of Fibertek.

HERNDON, Va. — Space-based lidar developer Fibertek has been selected as one of the 14 companies chosen by DARPA to participate in the 10-Year Lunar Architecture Capability Study (LunA-10), which aims to develop foundational technology concepts for commercially sustainable and monetizable lunar infrastructure. Fibertek will contribute through the development of its lunar infrastructure optical node (LION) technology which will transmit electricity via laser across the lunar surface, and provide optical communication capabilities.

From left: Oryl Photonics cofounders Nathan Dupertuis and Orly Tarun. Courtesy of Oryl Photonics.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — EPFL spinoff Oryl Photonics has concluded a seed fundraising round worth CHF 830,000 ($949,676). The funds will help to prepare the commercialization and industrialization of the company’s laboratory instruments, and to develop its service offering for solubility measurements of drugs in liquids.

WALTHAM, Mass. — GelSight, a developer of tactile intelligence technology, has signed a global partnership agreement with Hexagon, a developer of digital reality solutions. The reseller agreement will allow both GelSight and Hexagon to promote and sell GelSight’s tactile sensing products and future integrated products to the market. The formal partnership and collaboration between GelSight and Hexagon is also expected to accelerate the time to market for future products.

TOKYO — Technology company Fujitsu Limited and integrated telecommunications services company Chunghwa Telecom have signed a memorandum of understanding for a 2-year partnership with the aim of jointly studying the establishment of a network utilizing the all-photonics network (APN) technology based on the IOWN initiative in Taiwan. The two companies will discuss the creation of a network utilizing the APN technology in Taiwan and contribute to the delivery of a high-capacity, low-latency, low-power network environment.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Vizgen, Inc., a life science company, has agreed to a partnership with Scale Biosciences to combine their single-cell and spatial technologies for data analysis. The companies will leverage their respective technology to generate high resolution data from serial mouse brain tissue sections for single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq), single-cell DNA methylation, and targeted spatial gene expression. They will also be able to demonstrate the measurements from single-cell RNA-seq, targeted spatial gene expression profiling, and single nuclei DNA methylation to identify matching cell types, including all major cell types in the brain and subtypes of neurons.

WESTBOROUGH, Mass. — Provider of application-specific optical solutions Kopin Corporation has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research contract from the Naval Air Warfare Center to deliver microdisplays for lensless computational imaging. The goal of the research is to develop a high-resolution microdisplay which can operate at very high framerates to support development of trusted AI and autonomous capabilities for computational imaging.