Voyant raises $15.4m for integrated photonic 3D LiDAR chip
US startup Voyant Photonics has raised $15.4m for its integrated photonics 3D LiDAR chip technology.
The Series A round was led by UP.Partners with participation of earlier investors LDV Capital and Contour Ventures.
Voyant’s LiDAR system, developed at Columbia University in New York, contains thousands of optical components for a frequency modulated, continuous wave (FMCW) architecture fabricated on a single chip using the same standard CMOS technology as computer chips. This reduces the size and manufacturing complexity of LiDAR and paves the way for large-scale adoption of 3D sensing in the same way that CMOS image sensors enabled the accelerated growth of digital photography say the founders, Chris Phare and Steven Miller. The two had been working on LiDAR chips for years at Columbia’’s Lipson Nanophotonics Group when they decided to commercialize their technology and launched Voyant Photonics.
“When you fabricate a LiDAR system on a chip, the fabrication cost stays the same regardless of how many components you use,” said Phare. “We will soon be selling LiDAR systems for a few hundred dollars and longer-term will sell them for less than a hundred dollars at scale.”
“When we started on our mission to make LiDAR a ubiquitous technology for machine perception, a lot of people said silicon photonics was not ready to leave the lab,” said Miller. “Our successful first milestones prove that we can build a complete LiDAR solution that meets industrial needs, using silicon photonics, and deploy it anywhere.”
“Now that we can make LiDAR systems on semiconductor chips, we can make them better and less expensive with every development cycle, similar to Moore’s Law for computer chips,” added Phare. “While the excellent performance of our first LiDAR chips surprised even us, this is just the beginning. Just like with computer chips and camera sensors, every design iteration will get better.”
“Ubiquitous 3D vision is critical to enabling the transformation of the world of transportation and beyond. We are honored to partner with the Voyant team who is the leading innovator in the field. Their solution will leapfrog all competitors and deliver a scalable solution to enable 3D vision,” says Ben Marcus, Managing Partner of UP.Partners.
“I am so excited with the progress we have made. Our team has accomplished so much, and now we are delivering the first LiDAR systems of their type powered by an integrated photonic chip,” said CEO Peter Stern. “Our diverse customers in robotics, AGVs, mobility, industrial automation, and security all have one thing in common – they are building solutions that need to understand the world around them. That is what our LiDAR systems provide.”
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