Lumotive, a developer of programmable optical semiconductor technology, has secured investments from Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and the ITHCA Group. The investments bring the company’s series B-related funding to $59 million after the company announced $45 million in series B funding in February . The investment will help Lumotive to accelerate product deployments in industrial applications and enhance its global market presence for its liquid crystal beamforming chips, which support lidar sensing and other applications including in industrial automation, optical switching, and defense. The company’s light control metasurface (LCM) chips guide photons by using the light-bending properties of metamaterial surfaces. Nanostructures smaller than the wavelength of light work together to both shape and steer optical energy in any direction within the field of view. The technology is manufactured using conventional silicon fabrication processes, which enables scalability. Lumotive recently partnered with SolidVue to integrate SolidVue's direct time-of-flight single-photon avalanche diode (dTOF SPAD) array receiver with Lumotive’s beamforming technology. The company also has partnerships with E-Photonics, Hokuyo Automatic, and Namuga. Additionally, Lumotive is collaborating with Skywater Technology on the production of its technology.
