Pasadena-based PINC Technologies, a spinout from Caltech’s Nonlinear Photonics Laboratory, has raised $6.8 million in Seed+ funding to commercialize its NanoPPLN platform — an integrated photonic circuit technology designed to make nonlinear photonics scalable for real-world applications. The round was led by Quantonation, with participation from Wilson Hill Ventures, Freeflow Ventures, Hamamatsu Ventures, Qubits Ventures, Santec, and the Caltech Seed Fund.
PINC’s NanoPPLN (periodically poled lithium niobate) platform brings nonlinear optical functionality — a capability previously confined to bulky lab setups — onto chip-scale photonic devices. This advance enables compact, manufacturable systems for quantum information processing, next-generation optical communications, biomedical sensing, and industrial photonics. The company plans to use the new capital to expand its engineering team and accelerate product development and partnerships.
Photonics underpins modern communications and computing, but its growth has been constrained by the difficulty of implementing nonlinear effects—such as frequency conversion and entangled photon generation—on an integrated platform. PINC’s scalable approach could bridge that gap, positioning the company at the intersection of quantum and classical photonics innovation.
“Our vision at PINC is to bring nonlinear photonics out of the lab and into industry,” said Farzaneh Afshinmanesh, CEO and Co-founder of PINC Technologies. “This funding allows us to scale our engineering team, accelerate product development, and build collaborations to enable new capabilities in industrial photonics applications, quantum computing, biomedical sensing, and beyond.”
🌐 Analysis: PINC joins a growing wave of photonics startups targeting scalable nonlinear integration, an area critical to both quantum technologies and AI-driven optical computing. Its NanoPPLN technology competes with emerging lithium-niobate-on-insulator (LNOI) and silicon-photonics hybrid approaches from firms such as HyperLight, QuiX Quantum, and Ligentec. Quantonation’s backing underscores the strategic importance of integrated nonlinear photonics as a foundational layer in the coming quantum and optical-compute era.
- $6.8M total funding to date
- Seed+ round led by Quantonation
- Technology: NanoPPLN integrated nonlinear photonic circuits
- Applications: quantum information, advanced communications, sensing
- Founded in 2023; based in Pasadena, California
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