SA国际传媒

, a developer of meta-optic technologies for new lenses, has secured a $10 million Series A as the company looks to exit stealth and have its chips deployed in smartphones and mobile devices later this year.

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The round included investments from , , , and , along with and . The company now has raised $15.7 million since being founded in 2017 after being spun out of .

The Boston-based company is attempting to commercialize meta-optics 鈥� or optical metasurfaces 鈥� in which the functions of several lenses are combined into a single flat surface which can improve 3D sensing. A single meta-optics lens, which is basically constructed on a semiconductor chip, can replace the several curved lenses currently in devices such as cellphones while also enabling brighter, higher-quality infrared pictures, said co-founder and CEO .

鈥淲e are a fabless semiconductor company,鈥� Devlin said. 鈥淲e just make lenses instead of electronics.鈥�

Semiconductor partnerships

Metalenz already has two foundry partners to make their chips and two customers, Devlin said. With the company not having to worry about production, it can put its money and time into research and development as the company prepares to enter the end-user device market later this year, he added.

While the company cannot name the customers that will use its chips, Devlin said they are large manufacturers of end-user devices or suppliers to those manufacturers.

While the company will look to disrupt the cellphone lens market currently dominated by the likes of and initially, Devlin said the company鈥檚 meta-optics technology eventually can be applied to a variety of sectors such as automotive and health care.

鈥淭here is an explosion in the 鈥榠nternet of eyes鈥� as more and more cameras are deployed everywhere,鈥� said , managing partner of Tsingyuan Ventures. 鈥淲e believe that wafer-level lenses are about to replace every one of these conventional lenses.鈥�

Illustration: .