NIL Technology raises €26M to accelerate manufacturing of optical solutions for 3D sensing

Over the last two years, NILT has developed unique solutions for optical components that take optical sensing and 3D imaging to a new level with respect to performance, efficiency, compactness, and material consumption.

3D sensing is a pioneering feature for smartphones, consumer products, AR/MR, autonomous vehicles, etc., where cutting edge real-time sensor technologies, such as face- and gesture recognition or monitoring of surroundings are wanted.

Optical components based on NILT’s solutions are already used in flagship smartphones. The new financing will allow NILT to accelerate its mass production capabilities and expand its product development efforts. NILT will continue to strengthen its development of the revolutionary metalens technology to simplify, reduce size and improve quality across all optical component use cases.

Theodor Nielsen, founder, and CEO, of NILT comments:

“I am delighted to have our existing renowned investors follow-on with this new financing round, and I am pleased to welcome a new important investor. We have built a great team and developed unique optical solutions that have received amazing response in the market. Our solutions for 3D near infrared sensing, using our optical and metalens solutions, demand expansion of our production capabilities, something that now will accelerate.”

Jean Schmitt, Managing Partner at Jolt Capital and NILT board member comments:

“Photonics today stands where electronics were 20 years ago and NILT is at the forefront of that new optics revolution. At Jolt Capital we’ve been bullish on this topic for 10 years and we know how to scale high tech factories and increase yield in demanding environments. With this new round, we stand by NILT to help them mass produce this future ‘made in Europe’ light modules.”

Bo Ilsoe, Partner of NGP Capital and NILT board member adds:

“NILT has developed unique optical components that take sensing and 3D imaging to a new level. We are looking forward to seeing NILT’s solutions in consumer electronic products, autonomous vehicles, and machine vision applications. NILT is addressing a large market and they are led by a strong team. We look forward to cooperating with Theodor and his team, and to help creating a Danish winner in the optic industry.”

Martin Bruncko, deep tech entrepreneur and EIC Fund Investment Committee member adds:

“I am glad that the EIC Fund was able to catalyze this very large funding round for a European deep tech company that is commercializing breakthrough technology coming from advanced science and engineering. This €26 million series B round will move NILT’s product much closer to deployment in a number of important new markets, including autonomous vehicles and AR.”

About NILT

NIL Technology ApS (NILT) is an optical solutions company designing, developing, and manufacturing optical elements and components using high-precision nanoscale features. NILT creates competitive advantages in optical applications for 3D sensing, consumer electronics, machine vision, autonomous vehicles and VR/AR displays. Products include diffusers, fan-outs, collimators, focusing lenses and tech for making planar waveguides; all made by diffractive optical elements and metalenses. NILT was named as one of top-25 European IoT and hardware start-ups to watch in 2019.