Commercialization, funding, research, and future industry growth: we’re ready! 

August 2023 marks 5 years since NLM’s founding on August 10, 2018. With continued commercial and government-supported projects, $1 million in new investment, rigorous R&D, and steps for future growth, we are delighted by our progress and outlook. 

Photonics has become a sunny spot in the tech industry as there has been a renewed interest in hardware to solve one of the world’s biggest infrastructure and climate issues: excessive power consumption in computing and network hardware. Integrated photonics — and NLM’s hybrid EO technology — can alleviate bandwidth bottlenecks and reduce power use in transporting data. 

We’ve also come a long way in the last five years — from our initial founding based on a rising need and early academic results to building our first commercial and fab partnerships and starting our first independent research amidst the pandemic to navigating challenging market conditions and changes in the technology landscape to our first major corporate investors and rapidly rising commercial interest. 

Kicking off the year with exhibiting at SPIE Photonics West 2023 

Setting the tone for 2023, we started the year by exhibiting at Photonics West. The largest photonics conference in the world, Photonics West in San Francisco featured over 20,000 attendees and 2,000 vendors. This event was NLM’s first venture into hosting a booth. We drew a great bunch of interest in our work and got to meet so many passionate and bright people. 

We also attended other incredible industry conferences — such as the Optical Fiber Communication and Optica Executive Forum in San Diego, TechConnect World Innovation in Washington DC, and LETI Innovation Days in Grenoble, France — taking each as a valuable place to learn and network. We forged new connections, tightened existing ones, and enjoyed working with many great industry peers and friends. 

Closing $1 million in strategic partner funding 

In June, we secured $1 million in funding from our strategic partners Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd. (“TOK”) and Hamamatsu Photonics. TOK is a Japanese chemical company revolutionizing semiconductors with advanced materials, and Hamamatsu Photonics is a world-leading manufacturer of optoelectronic components and systems. Both of them are excited about the possibilities of integrating NLM’s proprietary materials with semiconductors and the commercial applications we can achieve together. 

Continuing our rigorous R&D 

Rigorous science stands behind NLM’s products, and our incredible team of scientists continues to research, create, build, expand upon, and test the many steps required to formulate our organic electro-optic (EO) materials and efficiently integrate them into chips. They’ve also designed, collaborated on, and constructed specialized equipment to improve our processes and test capabilities. 

As part of this effort, we co-published the paper, “Perspective: Nanophotonic electro-optics enabling THz bandwidths, exceptional modulation and energy efficiencies, and compact device footprints,” in the peer-reviewed scientific journal APL Materials, working with colleagues at the University of Washington, Polariton Technologies, imec, and ETH-Zurich. We were also awarded two government grants: a US Air Force (AFWERX) Phase 1 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract and a NASA Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase 1 grant working with AIM Photonics. Together with the University of Washington (UW), we also received a new patent for one of our latest EO materials. 

Preparing for future growth 

Amongst all this, we moved office and lab spaces to boost our ability for company growth. We are still located on the gorgeous UW campus, and this year, we celebrate 21 years of our team — specifically Dr. Scott Hammond — having a continuous collaborative relationship and presence at UW. However, we have moved from academic space to dedicated commercial space at the CoMotion Labs incubator, conveniently located above the Washington Nanofabrication Facility.

NLM expanded our board with technology leader Brad Booth. He brings extensive experience in data center architecture and integrated photonics from Microsoft, Intel, and Meta, and he helped set many of the common standards for internet technology. Brad adds invaluable insights and experiences to our team. 

Electronic-photonic integration offers a unique opportunity to tackle the power problems currently plaguing computing infrastructure. NLM’s technology and know-how are ready to embrace and solve these problems and bring other benefits of photonics to their full potential, and five years in, we are excited for what is to come. 

Banner image: The team and family at our 5th-anniversary party boating adventure. Top: L-R: Dr. Kevin O’Malley, Dr. Lewis E. Johnson, Dr. Delwin L. Elder, Maryse, Erica McGillivray, and Dr. Stephanie Benight. Bottom L-R: Dr. Bruce H. Robinson, Pamela, Dr. Scott R. Hammond, Gerard Zytnicki, Rob Dunn, and David Sparks.