Startup CAILabs raises additional €5 million for its optical beam shaping products
CAILabs (Rennes, France), a maker of optical beam shaping products, has raised venture funding of €5 million in a round led by Safran Corporate Ventures, with participation by Innovacom and Starquest Capital. This fundraising will allow the company to strengthen its industrial and commercial development in both telecommunications and industrial applications. The company plans to hire 11 employees in 2017, to help sustain the 160% growth it experienced in 2016.
Founded in 2013, CAILabs is a spin-off of the Kastler Brossel Laboratory (Paris), which focuses on the fundamental physics of quantum systems. It has developed spatial multiplexing products based on its multi-plane light conversion technology, which can manage the shape of light signals transmitted in an optical fiber to increase performance in both telecommunications and local area networks, with sales to Huawei, IBM, Nokia, and KDDI, and installations in factories, companies, universities, and hospitals.
Beyond telecommunications, CAILabs says it has integration partnerships with key industrial players in lithography, additive manufacturing, and laser welding. JeanFrançois Morizur, CEO and co-founder of CAILabs, says, “2017 also marks the realization of a project that we started with Safran Electrical & Power in 2015 regarding a new architecture of aeronautic optical cabling”.
Source: CAILabs
Conard Holton
Conard Holton has 25 years of science and technology editing and writing experience. He was formerly a staff member and consultant for government agencies such as the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and engineering companies such as Bechtel. He joined Laser Focus World in 1997 as senior editor, becoming editor in chief of WDM Solutions, which he founded in 1999. In 2003 he joined Vision Systems Design as editor in chief, while continuing as contributing editor at Laser Focus World. Conard became editor in chief of Laser Focus World in August 2011, a role in which he served through August 2018. He then served as Editor at Large for Laser Focus World and Co-Chair of the Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar from August 2018 through January 2022. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, with additional studies at the Colorado School of Mines and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.