PI Expands U.S. Motion Solutions Manufacturing: Week in Brief: 4/18/25

Photonics.com
Apr 2025BRIDGEWATER, N.J., April 18, 2025 — Hammatsu Photonics has entered into a strategic partnership with Sirona Dx, a provider of single cell multi-omics and spatial biology services, as its technology access partner. According to the companies, the collaboration will streamline the technology evaluation process by providing customers with access to deep spatial biology expertise within a GCLP/CLIA-accredited laboratory for imaging, staining, and bioinformatics analysis.

An artist’s rendering of PI’s new Shrewsbury, Mass, manufacturing facility. Courtesy of PI.

SHREWSBURY, Mass. — PI is in the process of building a new production facility in Shrewsbury, Mass., due to a commitment to mitigate import tariffs and to align production and support services closer to its U.S. customer base, the company said. The 140,000 sq ft facility will triple the combined space of PI's current locations in Auburn, Mass., Hopkinton, Mass., and Nashua, N.H., and will manufacture precision motion and automation systems, air bearings, piezoelectric transducers, and nanopositioning components. The facility is scheduled to commence operations in Fall 2025.

TØNSBERG, Norway — Tunable optics technology developer poLight ASA has entered into a strategic investment agreement with camera module manufacturer Q Technology Group (Q Tech). Per the agreement, poLight will issue 63,743,112 new shares to Q Tech at a subscription price of NOK 2.69 ($0.26) per share, raising proceeds to a total gross of NOK 171,468,971.28 ($16.3 million) The issuance will represent approximately 32.97% of poLight's outstanding shares following the private placement. As part of the partnership, Q Tech will have the right to nominate two members to poLight's board of directors and will work to establish a dedicated TLens assembly and test line in addition to poLight's existing manufacturing capabilities.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — NUBURU, Inc., an industrial blue laser technology developer, is planning to revitalize its blue-laser technology business unit by collaborating closely with its previous management team to develop a new strategic plan aimed specifically at addressing the defense sector’s needs and other synergistic vertical applications. The plan also includes the exploration of vertical applications of the technology, pursuing both new intellectual property (IP) rights and the strategic use of licensed IP rights. Concurrently, through a transformation plan that the company started following in February in an effort to remain in compliance with the New York Stock Exchange, NUBURU is in the process of finalizing a deal with a strategic funding partner to eliminate 100% of its long-term indebtedness.

Ridom GmbH managing director Dag Harmsen. Courtesy of Bruker.

VIENNA — Microscopy company Bruker Corp. has entered into a strategic collaboration with next-generation sequencing (NGS) company Ridom GmbH for NGS bioinformatics applications in microbiology and infectious disease testing. This coincides with Bruker’s microbiology and infection diagnostics division’s expansion of its microbiology solutions into NGS applications with research use-only NGS-based solutions in epidemiology and hospital acquired infection tracing. Bruker has also made a majority investment in vendor-agnostic therapeutic drug monitoring provider RECIPE Chemicals + Instruments GmbH in an effort to increase Bruker’s capabilities in small molecule clinical diagnostic assays.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — PsiQuantum, a quantum computing company, has been awarded a $10.8 million contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as part of a continued partnership that began in 2022. This phase will give AFRL a design space for comparative quantum circuits on PsiQuantum’s circuit tapeout. As part of the collaboration, PsiQuantum will supply barium titanate (BTO) electro-optic phase shifters, integrate BTO into AFRL-designed optical circuits, and will deliver the completed chips to AFRL.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Quantum computing and networking company IonQ has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI Technology (G-QuAT), a division of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technologies (AIST). G-QuAT is AIST’s initiative focused on developing advanced hybrid-quantum computing technologies with artificial intelligence, and aims to advance quantum research and development. The intent of the MOU is for G-QuAT and IonQ to work together to facilitate G-QuAT prospectively obtaining access to IonQ Forte-class quantum computers through the IonQ Cloud.

BONN, Germany — Researchers at Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs), along with quantum networking company Qunnect, have demonstrated sustained 99% transmission of entangled photons across 30 km of commercially deployed fiber for 17 days. The transmission was achieved in a fiber-optic test track in Berlin provided by the T-Labs' quantum research lab with only 1% network downtime. In a separate field experiment, polarization-entangled photons were dynamically routed over multiple paths, totaling 82 km in length, while coexisting with classical data traffic.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) is set to expand its quantum testing facilities with a new hub at the House of Quantum in Delft, Netherlands. The expansion will provide space and resources to meet the demand for quantum information technology testing facilities from startups and scaleups. The expansion was partly funded by the National Growth Fund program Quantum Delta NL.

Living Optics’ hyperspectral imaging technology will be demonstrated to Singapore Homeland Security’s HTX division for border security applications, among others. Courtesy of Living Optics.

ABINGDON, England — Living Optics, a hyperspectral imaging company, has been selected by Singapore Homeland Security’s HTX division for a strategic proof of concept initiative to demonstrate its imaging capabilities for security and forensic use cases. Living Optics will showcase its ready-to-deploy technology, demonstrating how its imaging capabilities strengthen border security, support forensic scene analysis, and serve a range of homeland security applications.

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