Morphotonics lands €40M to fix AI glasses bottleneck

Dutch deeptech company Morphotonics has closed a Series B funding round of more than €40 million, money it will use to scale up its manufacturing technology for AI glasses, augmented reality (AR) waveguides and advanced photonic components.

The round sees existing investors 3M Ventures, Innovation Industries and the Brabant Development Agency (BOM) increase their commitments, while Invest-NL joins as a major new shareholder. The European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Ernij Next and the European Investment Bank (EIB) also took part.

A hidden hardware problem

While tech giants in the US, Asia and Europe pour money into smart glasses, a less visible challenge threatens to slow the category down: making the optics. Waveguides, the transparent components that guide a digital image into the wearer's line of sight, are among the hardest and most expensive parts to produce at consumer-electronics volumes. Conventional methods tend to be slow, costly and hard to adapt when optical designs change.

Morphotonics builds large-area nanoimprint lithography platforms that address exactly that. The process uses a mould to stamp microscopic and nanoscale patterns into a thin liquid resin, which is then cured with UV light. Because the step can be repeated over and over on large surfaces, manufacturers can turn out components at higher volumes and lower cost than with traditional techniques. Speaking at a Brainport Industries photonics event last year, the company's Jan Matthijs ter Meulen described how its machines can pattern features as small as 50 nanometres across a full square metre, on glass, foil, wafers or panels. The real question for AR, he argued, is not whether the lenses are needed but "how we are going to make them all."

"Everyone is talking about AI glasses right now," said CEO Hugo da Silva. He stressed that such devices will only reach a mass market if the optical parts inside them can be produced at consumer-electronics scale, and that bringing nanoimprinting out of niche production and into high-volume manufacturing is precisely Morphotonics' role.

Tripled revenue

The company says its commercial traction is accelerating. Revenue in 2025 was three times higher than in 2024, and several of its platforms were installed for high-volume production worldwide over the same period. Morphotonics works with device and component makers in China, Taiwan, the United States and Europe.

The fresh capital will expand production capacity for Cypris, the company's platform built specifically for high-volume waveguide manufacturing. It will also fund product development, larger engineering, sales and support teams, a stronger supplier network and after-sales infrastructure. Beyond AR, the firm sees opportunities in displays, sensors and Co-Packaged Optics for data centres.

The market backdrop is favourable. Counterpoint Research expects consumers to spend more than $1 trillion on wearables between 2026 and 2032, with smart glasses alone reaching $44 billion in annual sales by the end of that period.

Keeping deeptech in Europe

Investors framed the deal as both a commercial and a strategic bet. Invest-NL's Johan Stins said the company is solving a clear industrial problem and that the funding supports its shift from technology development to broad industrial deployment. The EIB's Chantal Schrijver pointed to the importance of helping innovative European firms stay and grow on the continent, while BOM investment manager Fabian Hendrix called Morphotonics a global technology leader with roots in Brabant.

Founded in 2014, Morphotonics is based in the Brainport high-tech region around Eindhoven, close to a dense ecosystem of semiconductor, photonics and advanced-manufacturing suppliers.