• PINC Technologies

  Participated · Seed · Oct 2025

  PINC Technologies, a 2023 Caltech spin-out headquartered in Pasadena, CA, is building an integrated nonlinear photonics platform that makes high-performance light-based computing and communications practical at scale. Its chips and circuits target demanding use cases such as quantum information processing, next-generation data networks, biomedical sensing, and other industrial photonics systems. The company leverages research breakthroughs from the Caltech Nonlinear Photonics Laboratory to overcome long-standing scalability limits in nonlinear optics. Management plans to expand the engineering team, accelerate product development, and forge industrial collaborations to move the technology from lab prototypes to commercial deployment. PINC has raised a cumulative $6.8 million to fund these efforts, positioning the company to deliver critical enabling components for the emerging quantum and photonic ecosystems.

• Lumai

  Participated · Equity · Apr 2025

  Lumai develops optical processing hardware that performs core AI arithmetic operations inside optical beams travelling through 3D space, aiming to bypass the limits of silicon GPUs and integrated photonics. Its PCIe-form-factor design uses low-cost optical components to enable cost-effective, high-performance AI inference. Lumai says its architecture can deliver roughly 50× the performance of silicon-only accelerators while using about 10% of the power consumed by conventional data-center AI hardware. The company has overcome scalability challenges in optical computing and positions itself as an enabler for next-generation large-language-model inference. Lumai secured more than $10 million in investment to support the next stage of growth. It plans to use the funds to advance product development, double headcount, and expand its US presence. Company leadership and technical founders have received external recognition, including participation in the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Shott Accelerator and inclusion on the Photonics 100 list.

No current team members are available.