High-technology company TRUMPF plans to build a production facility in Pune, India. The company intends to invest €5 million ($5.4 million) in the facility, which will begin production later this year. The facility is expected to produce 300 bending and cutting machines annually. Additionally, TRUMPF has plans to add a showroom in Bengaluru to strengthen service in the region. TRUMPF will produce 300 cutting and bending machines per year at a new production facility in Pune, India. Courtesy of TRUMPF. BASEL, Switzerland — Bruker Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Swiss automated laboratory R&D provider Chemspeed Technologies. Chemspeed is focused on modular automation and robotics solutions for chemical research, pharmaceutical drug formulation, materials research for cleantech, and consumer applications. Financial terms of the transaction, which is expected to close in the first half of 2024, have not been disclosed. The acquisition follows Bruker's purchases of Raman instruments company Tornado Spectral Systems and electron microscope developer Nion earlier this year. Chemspeed’s FLEX automation workstation. Courtesy of Bruker. SEOUL, South Korea — LG Innotek has signed a share subscription agreement and strategic collaboration with AOE Optronics. Per the agreement, LG Innotek plans to share its capabilities in optical design, process automation, and advanced quality control systems, and AOE plans to share its independent materials and precision mold processing and precision lens manufacturing technologies to jointly develop lenses aimed at automotive and extended reality applications. BERLIN — Spatial light developers HOLOEYE Photonics has acquired assets from semiconductor company Jasper Display Corp’s liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) technology portfolio, allowing HOLOEYE to expand product lines on its LETO and GAEA spatial light modulator (SLM) platforms. HOLOEYE will offer support for former Jasper SLM customers to continue their academic and industrial research and development programs in the future. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. PARIS — Mersen, an electrical power and advanced materials company, has agreed to a global technical partnership with Canon to deliver galvano scanner motors for the high-end market of laser scanning applications. Canon's laser scanning innovations, combined with Mersen's SiC optics technology, have resulted in a new range of motorized galvano scanners installed in the GM series distributed by Canon. The DFM Stabilaser 1542e. Courtesy of Vescent. GOLDEN, Colo. — Quantum technologies company Vescent and the Danish National Metrology Institute have created a highly accurate optical clock assembled entirely from their commercially available components. The clock achieved 200 femtoseconds timing instabilities at 1 second and sub-nanosecond holdover at 1 day. The product, called the DFM Stabilaser 1542e, will be exclusively distributed through Vescent in the U.S. and Canada. PACÉ, France — Photon Lines, a distributor of optical instruments, has fully integrated its subsidiary See Fast Technologies, which it acquired in 2012. See Fast's R&D activities and engineers have been integrated into Photon Lines' R&D team. According to Photon Lines CEO Eric Dréan, the integration serves to simplify the company's organization and bolster its capabilities in the design of custom imaging setups. ESPOO, Finland — Nokia and NTT Corporation have completed a joint proof of concept (PoC) using Nokia’s mobile fronthaul solution over an all-photonic network, aligned with the objectives of the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum. The PoC demonstrated dynamic distribution of RAN resources to 5G radios using optical routing to better respond to evolving traffic demands while also ensuring optimal energy consumption compared with traditional fronthaul solutions. Three photonics projects were each awarded $70,000 in seed grants from the Gapontsev Family Collaborative Venture Fund. Courtesy of Worcester Polytechnical Institute. WORCESTER, Mass. — Faculty members from Worcester Polytechnic Institute have been awarded a total of $230,000 in seed grants for eight one-year research projects focused on topics ranging from tonsillectomies to data visualization. Three photonics projects were each awarded $70,000 from the Gapontsev Family Collaborative Venture Fund to pursue interdisciplinary collaborations focusing on laser tonsil ablation, high-temperature in-situ fiber optical Raman spectroscopy, and laser-excited NV diamond magnetic microscopy. MCLEAN, Va. — Booz Allen Hamilton's venture capital arm, Booz Allen Ventures, has made a strategic investment in Albedo, a company specialized in very low earth orbit satellites to provide ultrahigh resolution commercial imagery from space. The investment supports Albedo’s operational constellation deployment. Albedo's satellite imagery combines optical and infrared sensor data. Booz Allen joined the funding round with lead Standard Investments, in addition to Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Shield Capital, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator, Giant Step Capital, Republic Capital, and other undisclosed participants.
