PICs, funding, expansion, and space!

2025 was a bustling year for NLM. We want to share some of the technical and commercial milestones achieved by our growing team. With market trends showing strong growth in optics due to the bandwidth demand in AI, NLM is showcasing key technology at the inflection point of industry boom. This is an exciting time for the photonics business!

New investors kicked off 2025! 

In January, we received investment from Emerald Technology Ventures and Oregon Venture Fund to assist in our scaling and commercialization efforts. The two firms joined Idemitsu, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., Ltd., Pack Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures, and existing NLM investors to support NLM’s vision and focus. 

Frank Balas from Emerald and Andrew Grenville (independent director) joined our Board of Directors, alongside our CEO Brad Booth and CTO Lewis Johnson. 

Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) are here!  

At OFC 50 in April, we launched our 1.6T silicon organic hybrid (SOH) PIC! We developed this PIC alongside our partners Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF), Centera Photonics, and Enosemi. The demonstration at OFC represented a major commercialization milestone for SOH electro-optic technology featuring our patented material, Selerion™-HTX.  

In September, we announced record-setting results in our 1.6T and 3.2T PICs that showcase real-world improvements in 200G and path to 400G in multi-channel silicon-organic hybrid (SOH) PICs. Our PICs achieved unrivaled 0.31 V-mm modulation efficiency and industry-leading 110 GHz bandwidth performance. Tests were conducted by VLC Photonics in their labs and with our partner Keysight at our facility. These results have allowed us to begin sampling our PICs to select partners. 

For more about why photonics is becoming so important, check out our feature in PIC Magazine: Beyond silicon: building a photonic foundation for next-gen computing. 

NLM’s chips now orbit Earth on the International Space Station (ISS)! 

NLM’s SOH and Polariton Technologies’ plasmonic chips currently reside on the ISS! Sent on a flight in October, these chips will be subjected to the harshest environment around, including intense radiation, atomic oxygen erosion, extreme temperature fluctuations, and vacuum conditions, during their stay. These extremes are impossible to replicate here on Earth. Our SOH chips were developed through an STTR contract from NASA with AIM Photonics; the POH chips, using NLM’s Selerion-HTX, were created in partnership with Polariton Technologies. 

While these chips will travel more miles per day than even Brad gets in one year, NASA unfortunately doesn’t offer an air miles equivalent. 

Once the chips have completed their time in space, they’ll be sent back to our labs where we’ll assess how they withstood space and use these findings on durability for both space-bound technology and Earth-based applications. 

In Laser Focus World, Lewis shares more about what makes this chip testing so special and critical. 

NLM team expansion and industry engagement 

As NLM transitions from proof-of-concept to commercial realization, we’ve grown the company by 60%! Our newest technical hires bring critical knowledge, expertise, and experience in semiconductor process development, nanofabrication, metrology, formulation development, and mechanical engineering. We also brought on photonics and data center business development leader Varughese Mathew to lead sales and enhance our partnerships and customer base. 

The NLM team participated in multiple industry conferences and events in 2025. We kicked off the year with a presentation at SPIE’s Photonics West 2025; followed by a demonstration at OFC 50; and wrapped up with a presentation and booth at Optica + APC’s Photonic-Enabled Cloud Computing (PECC) Industry Summit. We joined SEMI’s Silicon Photonics Industry Alliance (SiPhIA) to introduce NLM to the vibrant Taiwanese semiconductor industry and attended the SEMICON Taiwan event. We proudly graduated from the exclusive Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Program’s 2024/2025 cycle in May and qualified to attend CDL’s Super Session in June in Toronto, Ontario.  

Our team with researchers from Polariton Technologies, University of Washington, ETH-Zürich, and KU Leuven published the scientific paper, “Ultrahigh Performance Cross-linkable Organic Electro-Optic Material for Hybrid Modulators,” in Chemistry of Materials. We talked to HPC Wire about photonic switches and keeping GPUs cool and to Electronic Specifier on powering AI data centers with next-gen photonics. 

NLM’s journey into 2026 

On the tails of 2025’s momentum, our team is excited to continue innovating and progressing into 2026. January’s Photonics West will kick off our tradeshow season, and following closely behind will be OFC in March with a demo showcase. (Are you going? Reach out to us to connect!) 

We look forward to sharing with you the advancements and other notable steps NLM will take throughout the next year. 

We wish you all the best for a prosperous, happy, and bright New Year.