The European Investment Bank has signed a €20 million convertible loan with Dutch semiconductor company Morphotonics as part of a funding round worth more than €40 million.
The money will be used to scale Morphotonics’ large-area nanoimprint lithography platforms, a manufacturing technology the company says is relevant for making components used in AI glasses, Augmented Reality waveguides and other photonic applications, the EIB announced on Tuesday.
A convertible loan is a form of financing that can later be turned into equity in a company under agreed conditions.
The Series B round also includes contributions from BOM and Invest-NL.
The EIB financing is supported under the European Commission’s InvestEU programme.
Chantal Schrijver, head of the EIB Group office in the Netherlands, said Europe needed to stay “in front” on cutting-edge technology and that the bank wanted to help local businesses “stay and grow in Europe.”
How the technology works
Morphotonics makes systems for nanoimprint lithography — a process that presses nano- and microscopic patterns into a liquid resin using a mould and then hardens the pattern with UV light, the EIB statement said.
The company said the approach can reproduce patterns with high precision across large surfaces, helping manufacturers produce components such as AR waveguides at higher volumes and lower costs than conventional production methods.
AI devices “will not reach mass adoption unless the optical components inside them can be manufactured at consumer-electronics scale,” Morphotonics chief executive Hugo da Silva said, adding that the company was working to bring nanoimprint lithography from specialist production into high-volume manufacturing.
