Insider Brief
- Swave Photonics secured €27M ($28.27M) in Series A funding, co-led by imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, to advance its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform for AI-powered AR smartglasses and heads-up displays, delivering a natural, high-resolution viewing experience.
- The company’s patented technology, leveraging nano-pixels and DynamicDepth, addresses key challenges of AR devices like high cost, size, power consumption, and user discomfort, eliminating the need for costly components like waveguides.
- Swave plans to introduce product development kits and production devices soon, showcasing its innovations at CES 2025, where its HXR platform has been recognized with a CES Innovation Award.
PRESS RELEASE — Swave Photonics, the true holographic display company, today announced the close of its €27M ($28.27M) Series A funding round. This significant investment in Swave will catalyze the advancement of its Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) platform, enabling a reality-first user experience for AI-powered augmented reality (AR) smartglasses and heads-up displays.
The funding round was co-led by investors imec.xpand and SFPIM Relaunch, with participation from new investors EIC Fund, IAG Capital Partners, and Murata Electronics North America, Inc., as well as existing investors Qbic Fund, PMV, imec, and Luminate. Swave previously raised a €10M ($10.47M) Seed round in 2023, which propelled the launch of Swave’s HXR technology, as well as the expansion of Swave’s team, which proudly leverages the top minds in photonics and semiconductors.
“This round will accelerate Swave’s product introductions as we continue to solve the challenges of today’s AR experiences through true holography,” said Mike Noonen, Swave CEO. “We are thrilled with continued support from our existing investors and our new investors. They recognize that Swave uniquely brings together semiconductor, holographic and AI technologies in a way that will deliver cost-effective and truly useful solutions.”
“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,” said Theo Marescaux, Swave co-founder and Chief Product Officer. “We are co-designing every element — from our holographic SLMs with cutting-edge nano-pixels, to real-time compute chips, light engines, and AR combiners — delivering the most advanced and integrated solution yet.”
“With Swave’s seed funding, we successfully built our team, proved the capabilities of the technology, and completed prototype designs,” said Dmitri Choutov, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer. “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.”
Swave’s HXR technology uses the world’s smallest pixel to shape light and sculpt high-quality 3D holographic images that create a reality-first user experience, where digital information interacts and adapts to the user’s surroundings. The images allow for the human vision system to process them naturally leveraging patented DynamicDepth technology.
AR devices currently being prototyped or on the market are all faced with challenges of high cost, uncomfortable size and weight, significant power usage, and visual phenomena like Vergence-Accommodation Conflict, which cause nausea or fatigue for users. Swave’s unique HXR technology not only solves these issues, but also eliminates the need for the most costly components, such as waveguides or varifocal lenses, inherently required for existing AR devices.
Swave’s technology has been developed for over a decade and the company currently holds 60 core technology patents. Swave announced its HXR platform in April 2024, followed by the achievement of the world’s first true color holographic display, and recently announced that HXR will be recognized at CES 2025 with a CES Innovation Award.
The Swave team will be at CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, from Tuesday, January 7 to Friday, January 10, 2025. To request a meeting at CES with the Swave team, please email [email protected].
About Swave:
Swave, the true holographic display company, develops chipsets to deliver reality-first spatial computing powered by AI. The company’s Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) display technology is the first to achieve true holography by sculpting lightwaves into natural, high-resolution images. The proprietary technology will allow for compact form factors with a natural viewing experience. Founded in 2022, the company spun-out from imec and utilizes CMOS chip technology for manufacturing for a cost-effective, scalable, and swift path to commercialization. For more information, visit https://swave.io/
This operation benefits from support from the European Union under the InvestEU Fund.
Contacts
Media Contacts:
Carol Boyko
104 West Partners for Swave Photonics
[email protected]
