Metalenz Raises $30 Million Series B to Address Fast Growing Demand
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Metalenz Relocates Headquarters, Doubles Footprint, and Grows Team to Meet Increasing Demand for its Metasurface Optics

Metalenz Relocates Headquarters, Doubles Footprint, and Grows Team to Meet Increasing Demand for its Metasurface Optics

Newly expanded headquarters and workforce follows an oversubscribed series B and growing demand from the consumer electronics market.

Boston, MA – March 13, 2023 – Metalenz, the first company to commercialize metasurface optics, today announced they have moved their headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts, more than doubling the Company’s footprint. The move comes after adding key personnel and equipment to its design and engineering teams. Metalenz now employs a full-time team of >40.

We have fostered a terrific company culture here at Metalenz, and our new headquarters will provide an ideal collaborative environment for our growing team as we continue to see increasing demand for our metasurface optics.  The relocation to a much larger space and expansion of our design, engineering, and project management teams will accelerate our roadmap, support our supply chain, and speed the productization of our metasurface optics and our breakthrough polarization imaging platform, PolarEyes in fast growing 3D sensing applications for improved machine vision, secure user identification, and next generation depth sensing and gesture recognition.” Rob Devlin, co-founder, and CEO of Metalenz.

With more than half of its employees focused on the design and engineering of the Company’s proprietary meta-optic solutions, the new space will house an expanded engineering lab to ramp production of custom NIR meta-optics and customer evaluation kits based on rapidly increasing demand. 

Following the successful June 2022 debut of its metasurface optics in time-of-flight systems for the consumer electronics market via a partnership with semiconductor giant, STMicroelectronics, and a $30 million series B funding round led by Neotribe Ventures announced in October 2022, the company continues to grow with millions of its metasurface optics now in market. Most recently, the Company’s PolarEyes™, a mobile form factor polarization imaging system, was recognized with a Prism Award in Cameras and Imaging from SPIE.

Metalenz Wins 2023 Prism Award

Metalenz Wins 2023 Prism Award

Metalenz’s “PolarEyes™” Polarization Imaging Platform takes home the prestigious award from SPIE in the Cameras and Imaging category.

San Francisco, CA – SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, recognized the most innovative new optics and photonics products with the annual industry-focused Prism Awards. Metalenz was named winner of the Camera and Imaging category for PolarEyes, the Company’s breakthough polarization imaging platform designed around the unique capabilities of Metalenz meta-optics.

PolarEyes is the world’s first and only optical module that can instantly provide information about the material make-up and depth details of the imaged scene, thereby providing highly valuable, previously unavailable information to machine vision systems.

Traditional approaches to polarization imaging require a complex array of optics, waveplates and filters, resulting in modules that are too large, expensive, and inefficient for mass markets or small form-factor devices. Dr. Noah Rubin and Professor Federico Capasso demonstrated in foundational research that a single meta-optic can complete image all of the polarization information in a scene without filtering or loss of efficiency. Now, the team at Metalenz has productized this breakthrough with PolarEyes. The result is a full-Stokes polarization camera that is over 5000x more compact than traditional cameras. This brings powerful lab camera capabilities into tiny camera modules that fit into any smart or mobile device. More than a polarized meta-optic, this full-stack, system-level solution combines physics and optics, software and hardware to power machine vision systems for next-generation smartphones and consumer electronics, to new automotive, robotic and healthcare applications.

“We are honored to have this recognition from SPIE and the photonics community. With PolarEyes, we are using our metasurface technology to look beyond just solving size and performance in existing sensor modules. We are empowering billions of devices with new information that will change the way that people and machines interact with and understand the world.” Rob Devlin, Metalenz Co-founder and CEO.

Members of the Metalenz team celebrate the win during the Prism Award banquet in San Francisco

Now in its 15th year, the SPIE Prism Awards reflect the rapidly growing trajectory, exciting latest developments, and rich technical innovations across photonics and photonics-enabled industries. Finalists and winners were selected by a panel of international judges who leveraged their knowledge and acumen from across the technology commercialization and funding sectors. Below is the complete list of the award categories, the winners, and their winning products:

  • AR VR MR: TriLite Technologies, Trixel® 3
  • Biomedical: Philophos, KUOS-O100
  • Cameras and Imaging: Metalenz, PolarEyesTM
  • Lasers: Kyocera SLD Laser, LaserLight LiFi System
  • Quantum Tech: QuiX Quantum, 20-mode Quantum Photonic Processor
  • Sensors: Ocean Insight, SpeedSorterTM
  • Software: Dotphoton, Jetraw
  • Test and Measurement: Precitec Optronik, Flying Spot Scanner (FSS 310)

View the full press release from SPIE

Metalenz Invited Speaker at SPIE AR|VR|MR

Metalenz Invited Speaker at SPIE AR|VR|MR

Metalenz to Participate at SPIE AR|VR|MR and Photonics West as Invited Speaker and Prism Award Finalist, Recruit at Job Fair.

January 27, 2023 – The SPIE AR | VR | MR conference, collocated with Photonics West, and taking place Jan 31 & Feb 1, is focused on the hardware and technologies shaping the future of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality, and enabling the metaverse. As invited speaker, Rob Devlin, Metalenz Co-founder and CEO will discuss how Metalenz has taken metasurfaces from lab to commercialization, and how the company’s ability to simplify and shrink complex optical systems with metasurface technology enables advanced sensing for improved XR experiences.

Schedule

Invited Talks 4: Hardware Ecosystems

Rob Devlin, Co-founder and CEO, Metalenz

Metasurfaces: from lab to mass production

February 1, 2023 4:00 p.m. PST

AR | VR | MR Main Stage, Level 3 West, Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA

Full Schedule

Additional Participation During Photonics West

Prism Award Finalist

In addition to presenting, Metalenz is a finalist for the Prism Award for its PolarEyes™ Polarization Imaging System. PolarEyes characterizes depth, material properties and detects transparent objects–bringing new information to a mobile form factor for the first time.

Now in its 15th year, the Prism Awards continue to recognize and honor the best optics and photonics products and technical innovations being brought to market. Award winners will be announced at a gala celebration at Photonics West on February 1.

More info here

Job Fair

Metalenz will participate in the AR|VR|MR job fair taking place on January 31 and Feb 1. Members of the Metalenz team will be present onsite at booth AVRJF2 Moscone Center West to discuss open positions and answer questions.

More info here

CES 2023 – Metalenz to Participate in EMD Electronics Tech Talks

CES 2023 – Metalenz to Participate in EMD Electronics Tech Talks

EMD Electronics, the U.S. and Canada Electronics business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, has organized a slate of Tech Talks showcasing technologies and applications for advancing digital living with senior executives and invited industry experts and partners at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

As part of this special programming, Metalenz has been invited to participate in the panel, “Digital Optics & the Metaverse: Hardware That Opens the World Up to New Virtual Worlds”.

Event poster VR headset

About the event

Today, users access the metaverse through gaming headsets and smartphones. As innovation of VR, XR and AR create new possibilities for the metaverse for those not only deep in the discipline, but also for the average consumer’s everyday life – the usability, comfort, and seamlessness of the hardware and the technology will be key to mass adoption. In this Tech Talk, Lars Johnsson, VP of Product, Sales & Marketing at Metalenz will join experts Richard Harding, Jacob Woodruff, and Julien Wu of EMD Electronics to discuss the material and device innovations- to create lighter, slimmer devices, improved optical experiences, increased computing power, and improved energy efficiency – all of which are making this future a reality for the masses.

Johnsson will discuss how innovative optical metasurfaces from Metalenz can enable next-generation 3D sensing capability with significantly improved  performance and precision as compared to conventional optics. In addition, Metalenz  provides new information to machine vision systems by shrinking complex sensing devices to mobile form factors and price point for the first time.

Schedule

January 5th, 2023 2:30 p.m. PST

Digital Optics & the Metaverse: Hardware That Opens the World Up to New Virtual Worlds

In person:  EMD Electronics Booth #9217 in the Las Vegas Convention North Hall

Online (free!):  Streaming Live on LinkedIn