Morphotonics has raised €40M to ramp up production of the optics found inside smart glasses and to carry the same stamping technology into data centers.
The Dutch company, which sits in Veldhoven, works in nanoimprint lithography. Its process presses a “stamp” into photosensitive material to form displays and waveguides. The waveguides themselves are slim sheets of glass or plastic, bending light down a set route so the picture lands where the wearer’s eye will find it. Eyewear built on that optics includes Meta’s Ray-Ban Display and Magic Leap. Morphotonics has drawn on ASML’s regional supply chain and shared vendors while spending twelve years refining the technique, largely out of public view.
Existing backers 3M Ventures, Innovation Industries and BOM returned, with Invest-NL arriving as a new name on the cap table. Money also arrived from the European Innovation Council Fund and the European Investment Bank, alongside Dutch family office Ernij Next.
A second market
Demand for the eyewear is running hot. Chinese officials reported that smart-glasses sales in their market doubled across the first eight months of 2026.
The new money carries Morphotonics past eyewear into co-packaged optics, the light-based connections that shuttle data between chips and are emerging as a bottleneck for AI clusters. Chief executive Hugo da Silva said headcount has more than doubled to 60 since he joined, and hiring continues. A next-generation machine able to make more than six million waveguides a year ships early next year.
