HORIBA to Establish Malaysia Production Base: Week in Brief: 4/25/25
Aerospace and defense corporation Safran, through its Safran Corporate Ventures investment subsidiary, has invested in mirSense, a French startup specializing in quantum cascade lasers, as part of a total funding round of €7 million (~$8 million). The investment is meant to support the development of advanced technologies to enhance the performance of Safran’s optronics products used for military applications and miniaturized gas sensor solutions.
NÜRNBERG, Germany — Optical defect detection products company V-Optics has entered into a partnership with wave-front sensors company Optocraft and metrology company Micro-Epsilon to create a metrology portfolio for the contact lens, intraocular lens, and eyeglass industry. The partnership will allow V-Optics to add another measurement modality to Optocraft and Micro-Epsilon’s product ranges.
TORONTO — Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. has entered into a strategic research and development partnership with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to accelerate the development of silicon photonic integrated circuits for quantum applications, with the goal of delivering technologies for both military and commercial applications. Through the four-year agreement, AFRL will provide Xanadu access to its process design kit (PDK) for silicon photonic circuits. Xanadu will evaluate the PDK within its software ecosystem and offer technical feedback to help AFRL tailor its chip designs for quantum-specific applications, including entangled photon generation and squeezed light sources.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Optics company Advanced Glass Industries has acquired Glass Fab Inc. and has made plans to grow its business in Rochester, N.Y., through a $5 million investment partially funded through Empire State Development. Along with the expansion, the combined companies will be rebranded to EvolvOptic and are committed to creating up to 40 new jobs over the next five years.
DUESSELDORF, Germany — The European Commission has made a €6 million ($6.8 million) investment in the SPRINTER project, a project focused on the development of an industrial internet using lasers and next-generation flexible and adaptable wireless to power future smart factories. SPRINTER currently has four prototypes in development including 200 Gbps optical transceivers, hybrid free-space optical transceivers, millimeter wave transceivers, and wavelength-tunable 10 Gbps transceivers.
TOKYO — Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and Nanofiber Quantum Technologies Inc. (NanoQT) have launched a joint demonstration aimed at establishing interconnection technologies for neutral-atom quantum computers. The demonstration aims to develop a photonic quantum interface by leveraging Mitsubishi Electric's qubit control technologies and NanoQT's technology, which combines Ytterbium (Yb) atoms and nanofiber cavities, to demonstrate technology for high-efficiency interconnection between neutral Yb atom quantum computers.
An artist’s rendition of Horiba Malaysia’s new production base. Courtesy of HORIBA Group.
BAYAN LEPAS, Malaysia — The HORIBA Group’s Malaysian subsidiary Horiba Malaysia Sdn Bhd is scheduled to move from Bayan Lepas, Malaysia, to a newly established production base in the neighboring state of Kedah. Scheduled to start full-scale operations in January 2026, the site will produce mass flow controllers and be co-located with a laboratory that is focused on the development of advanced materials and semiconductors.
FREMONT Calif. — The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) has released an implementation agreement (IA) defining a single-wavelength 800G coherent line interface, or 800LR. The IA specifies a single-span, unamplified, point-to-point link of up to 10 km using fixed wavelength, purpose-built for interoperable, low-latency, low-power coherent solutions across a range of high-volume applications. The 800LR IA defines a coherent interface optimized for applications such as data center interconnects, metro edge, and enterprise campus deployments.
Avicena’s LightBundle micro-LED-based interconnect. Courtesy of Avicena.
SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Optical interconnect architecture developer Avicena has entered into a partnership with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to optimize photodetector arrays for Avicena’s LightBundle micro-LED-based interconnects. LightBundle supports >1 Tbps/mm shoreline density and extends ultra-high density die-to-die connections to >10 m at class-leading sub-pJ/bit energy efficiency. This will enable AI scale-up networks to support large clusters of GPUs across multiple racks, eliminating reach limitations of current copper interconnects while drastically reducing power consumption, according to the companies.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) has launched its Center of Excellence in Directed Energy, a university-wide center designed to conduct basic research on focused energy to develop new applications and build a workforce skilled in the science and systems development of directed energy (DE). In support of the center, Penn State has invested in facilities for DE fabrication and testing, 4D material characterization, and high-performance computing. The university is also planning to make faculty hires and graduate fellowships in DE-focused disciplines. The center will be located in a new laboratory space in the Engineering Collaborative Research and Education building, shared with the Computational Electromagnetics and Antennas Research Lab.
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