Lightspring, a DeepTech startup based in Besançon, France, has raised €3.1 million in a Seed funding round. The company develops and manufactures optical components for photonic chips.
The new funding will help Lightspring work on optical packaging, which currently makes up around half of the total cost of a photonic chip.
The round was led by Atlantic and OVNI Capital, with additional support from Concept Ventures, Ixcore, Plug and Play Ventures, and several industry angel investors.
Lightspring has also received a €350,000 grant after being selected as a winner of France’s national i-Lab DeepTech innovation competition. Including the grant, Seed funding, and other public innovation funding, the company has secured more than €3.5 million in total financing.
The company will use the funding to move its 3D optical coupling technology from the laboratory stage to large-scale production.
“The whole industry is working on making photonic chips faster, yet light still loses most of its energy the moment it enters or leaves the device. We decided to attack that specific problem: to build the optical interface the same way the rest of the chip is built, in one reproducible process step. This funding will turn a lab result into a qualified industrial building block,” said Bonnat, co-founder and CEO of Lightspring.
“The industry has no standard way to get light into a package, which is why every design is bespoke and every yield number disappoints. We are building one: a PDK for 3D optical coupling that works across foundry platforms and material systems, so designers can adopt it without rebuilding their line. That is what turns a process into a layer the industry can build on,” said Grabulosa, co-founder and CTO of Lightspring.
“Photonics is scaling into AI infrastructure fast, but optical packaging remains a slow and expensive step. Lightspring has developed a technology that finally makes it scalable. We back teams with the potential to become the leaders of categories that don’t exist yet, and Lightspring is definitely one of them,” said Quentin Calleja, Principal, Atlantic.
Founded in 2026 in Besançon, France, by Grégoire Bonnat, Adrià Grabulosa, and Daniel Brunner, Lightspring is developing a 3D-based platform for making photonic chips.
The company uses 3D lithography directly on the chip to make the photonic packaging process more flexible and easier to control. Lightspring says photonic packaging is currently one of the most expensive and difficult parts of making photonic chips, with inconsistent results.
Lightspring will use the new funding to improve its Process Design Kit (PDK) and design tools for photonic integrated circuit (PIC) designers. These tools will make it easier for engineers to design photonic chips.
The company also plans to hire experts in microfabrication, optical testing, and photonic circuit design. This will help grow its team to 12 people. Lightspring will also work with industrial partners to develop solutions for co-packaged optics for AI infrastructure.
Lightspring plans to scale its manufacturing platform and test its technology under real industrial conditions. The goal is to make sure its process is ready for wider commercial production.
