Swave Photonics Secures €27 Million to Revolutionize AR Glasses with True Holography

Swave Photonics, a Leuven-based augmented reality (AR) company, has successfully closed its €27 million Series A funding round. The funding aims to advance the company’s Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform and bring a reality-first experience to AI-powered AR smart glasses and heads-up displays.

Swave Photonics Secures €27 Million to Revolutionize AR Glasses with True Holography
Swave Photonics Secures €27 Million to Revolutionize AR Glasses with True Holography

Swave Photonics, a Leuven-based augmented reality (AR) company, has successfully closed its €27 million Series A funding round. The funding aims to advance the company’s Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform and bring a reality-first experience to AI-powered AR smart glasses and heads-up displays.

The Series A round was co-led by imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, with participation from new investors such as the EIC Fund, IAG Capital Partners, and Murata Electronics North America, Inc.. Existing backers, including Qbic Fund, PMV, imec, and Luminate, also participated in this round. This follows a successful €10 million seed round in 2023 that allowed the company to launch its HXR technology and strengthen its team, described as leveraging “the top minds in photonics and semiconductors.”

Speaking about the new funding, Mike Noonen, CEO of Swave Photonics, stated, “This round will accelerate Swave’s product introductions as we continue to solve the challenges of today’s AR experiences through true holography.” He emphasized the strategic importance of combining semiconductor, holography, and AI technologies to deliver “cost-effective and truly useful solutions” for the evolving AR market.

Founded in 2022 as a spin-off from imec, Swave Photonics specializes in utilizing CMOS chip technology to offer a cost-efficient, scalable, and rapid approach to commercialization. The company is focused on developing chipsets that enable reality-first spatial computing, driven by AI. Its proprietary HXR display technology is touted as the first to achieve true holography, creating natural, high-resolution images by sculpting lightwaves. This innovation promises compact form factors and a more seamless user experience compared to existing AR solutions.

According to Theo Marescaux, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Swave Photonics, “AR glasses are set to become the primary interface for AI-powered spatial computing and other applications, and Swave is uniquely positioned to enable this future.” The company is reportedly co-designing all key elements of its technology, including holographic spatial light modulators (SLMs), real-time compute chips, light engines, and AR combiners, to deliver an integrated solution.

Swave Photonics claims that its HXR technology employs the “world’s smallest pixel” to shape light and generate high-quality 3D holographic images. These images are designed to adapt to the user’s surroundings and interact naturally with the human visual system, thanks to the patented DynamicDepth technology.

The company also highlights several issues plaguing current AR devices, including high costs, bulky designs, excessive power consumption, and visual discomfort caused by phenomena like Vergence-Accommodation Conflict, which often lead to nausea or fatigue for users. In contrast, Swave asserts that its technology not only addresses these challenges but also eliminates the need for expensive components like waveguides and varifocal lenses, which are staples in many existing AR systems.

Reflecting on the company’s journey so far, Dmitri Choutov, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, stated, “With Swave’s seed funding, we successfully built our team, proved the capabilities of the technology, and completed prototype designs. With Series A funding secured and silicon running at our partner fabs, we are on track to introduce product development kits and soon thereafter production devices.”

This new investment positions Swave Photonics to make significant strides in AR technology, as it works toward making AR glasses a mainstream interface for spatial computing and beyond.