Cnuic secures €3M pre-seed to unlock next-generation photonic chip production

Scotland's Cnuic has raised €3 million in pre-seed funding led by Tensor Ventures, together with the Silicon Valley-based Blank Space Ventures. The round also saw participation from Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Phasechange, SANDS, and Superlative.

The company based in Edinburgh has developed a working prototype of a completely new type of photolithography device, which makes use of the properties of light, enabling rapid, reconfigurable production of photonic chips with enhanced 3D control, something that was previously impossible. 

This will enable a new scale of photonic chip production, and could result in a completely new balance of power in the global chip industry, in Europe’s favour. 

In practice, Cnuic asserts this could be the biggest innovation in this field since the invention of the transistor.

The semiconductor industry is facing its biggest transformation since the invention of the transistor. Silicon chips are nearing their physical limits. In contrast, photonic chips transmit data using light, that is, photons, rather than electrons, and therefore offer significantly higher transmission speeds without overheating.

Until now, the main obstacles to the mass deployment of photonic chips have been their technological complexity and high manufacturing costs. 

New technology represents a critical turning point for business, as these properties will enable global tech giants to operate data centres with radically lower cooling and electricity costs. 

In the field of AI, model training will be significantly accelerated by photonic chips, which eliminate “bottlenecks” in communication among thousands of processors. The underlying technology also opens up possibilities across a broader range of light-based systems, including metalenses, 3D photonic crystals, AR and VR waveguides, flexible gratings, and similar applications. 

According to Omar Durrani, co-founder of Cnuic, every major leap in human capability has come from learning to use a new medium better. 

“We learned to use electrons. Now we are learning to use light. Cnuic is building the tools that make that possible at scale." 

“Cnuic’s technology can democratise the production of photonic chips in much the same way that PCs democratized computing power,” says Ondřej Lipold, partner in Tensor Ventures. 

Martin Drdúl, co-founder of Tensor Ventures, who oversaw the investment alongside Ondřej Lipold, adds: 

“From a deep tech perspective, this is a completely new technology and a major breakthrough that could mean a whole new role for Europe in the semiconductor industry.”