Dec 30, 2021

by Peter Stern

Long Island City, NY – Voyant Photonics (www.voyantphotonics.com) announced that it raised $15.4M in Series A led by UP.Partners with participation of earlier investors LDV Capital and Contour Ventures.

Voyant’s LiDAR system, containing thousands of optical components fabricated on a single semiconductor chip, enables its customers to integrate an effective and exponentially more scalable LiDAR system than possible to date. LiDAR is a key technology to enable 3D vision across many industries including transportation, robotics, industrial automation, and consumer electronics. Voyant developer kits are now available for select customers on its waiting list.

Previously, LiDAR systems were fabricated using discrete mechanical and optical components, resulting in large and expensive solutions. Voyant Photonics’ solution radically reduces the size and manufacturing complexity of LiDAR. Voyant’s LiDAR chips pave the way for large-scale adoption of 3D sensing in the same way that CMOS image sensors enabled the accelerated growth of digital photography. 

Block diagram of current and future LiDAR chips
Photo credit: Voyant Photonics

Voyant leverages commercially available and scalable semiconductor fabrication processes that combine thousands of optical and electrical components onto a single chip. This enables Voyant to mass-produce a LiDAR system similar to how computer chips are made. This groundbreaking technology will make Voyant LiDAR a ubiquitous technology for machine perception.

Co-founders Chris Phare and Steven Miller had been working on LiDAR chips for years at Columbia University’s Lipson Nanophotonics Group when they decided to commercialize their technology and launched Voyant Photonics.

Miller and Phare’s unique insight was to apply the silicon photonics technology used for optical data communications, the same technology that has made high-performance data center fiber optics affordable. “When you fabricate a LiDAR system on a chip, the fabrication cost stays the same regardless of how many components you use,” said Phare. “We will soon be selling LiDAR systems for a few hundred dollars and longer-term will sell them for less than a hundred dollars at scale.” 

Voyant Photonics’ devices demonstrate a complete LiDAR system in a field-deployable package, using Voyant’s patented techniques for on-chip digital beam steering, optical signal processing, and laser control. 

FMCW LiDAR Sensor Module, Voyant Development kit
Photo credit: Voyant Photonics

“When we started on our mission to make LiDAR a ubiquitous technology for machine perception, a lot of people said silicon photonics was not ready to leave the lab,” said Miller. “Our successful first milestones prove that we can build a complete LiDAR solution that meets industrial needs, using silicon photonics, and deploy it anywhere.” 

“Now that we can make LiDAR systems on semiconductor chips, we can make them better and less expensive with every development cycle, similar to Moore’s Law for computer chips,” added Phare. “While the excellent performance of our first LiDAR chips surprised even us, this is just the beginning. Just like with computer chips and camera sensors, every design iteration will get better.” 

“Ubiquitous 3D vision is critical to enabling the transformation of the world of transportation and beyond. We are honored to partner with the Voyant team who is the leading innovator in the field. Their solution will leapfrog all competitors and deliver a scalable solution to enable 3D vision,” says Ben Marcus, Managing Partner of UP.Partners. 

“I am so excited with the progress we have made. Our team has accomplished so much, and now we are delivering the first LiDAR systems of their type powered by an integrated photonic chip,” says Peter Stern. “Our diverse customers in robotics, AGVs, mobility, industrial automation, and security all have one thing in common – they are building solutions that need to understand the world around them… That is what our LiDAR systems provide.” Peter is a serial entrepreneur who has a background in creating military-grade LiDAR. He started as an advisor to Voyant and recently became CEO.

About Voyant Photonics

Voyant is creating a new category of LiDAR sensor for machine perception. Founded by top scientists with more than a decade of research in silicon photonics, Voyant fabricates sophisticated optical systems optimized for FMCW LiDAR using low-cost semiconductor chips. Voyant’s compact, active sensing solutions will revolutionize machine perception for transportation, robotics, and monitoring application.

About UP.Partners

Transportation is the underlying fabric of society. UP.Partners invests in the pioneering entrepreneurs who are creating the key enabling technologies that help move people and goods cleaner, faster, safer, and more efficiently in a multi-dimensional world. UP.Partners with some of the world’s most innovative investors and companies including Alaska Airlines, ARK Invest, and Woven Capital, the investment arm of Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet Group. UP.Summit convenes the mobility community’s brightest minds each year to help humanity go UP. Together, the UP community is transforming the moving world.

About LDV Capital

LDV Capital is a thesis-driven early-stage venture fund investing in people building businesses powered by visual technology that leverage computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. Deep knowledge of the domain, extensive expert network and unique platform initiatives have made LDV Capital a leader in the visual tech ecosystem. Led by serial entrepreneur Evan Nisselson, LDV Capital has been investing in pre-seed and seed-stage teams across North America and Europe since 2012. 

About Contour Venture Partners     

Contour Venture Partners, founded in 2005, is a New York City based seed stage venture capital firm. Contour was the first seed stage venture capital firm to have a focus on New York City and we have been highly involved in helping the ecosystem grow and mature over the last 17 years. Contour invests in seed stage companies that provide innovative technology enhanced solutions into the enterprise SaaS, vertical B2B SaaS and fintech/financial services sectors. Contour has a long and successful investment track record, having invested in over 100 companies through numerous market cycles.