Morphotonics raises €40M to extend nanoimprint lithography into data centers

Dutch nanoimprint lithography specialist Morphotonics has raised €40 million to scale up production of its patterning equipment and expand from smart-glasses displays into optical components for data centers. According to TechCrunch, the round extends a fundraising effort that began in 2024 and has been drawn down in installments.

The latest tranche was backed by 3M Ventures, Innovation Industries, BOM and Invest-NL, with participation from the European Innovation Council Fund, the Dutch family office Ernij Next and the European Investment Bank.

A different kind of lithography

Morphotonics operates next to, but apart from, its far larger compatriot ASML, whose machines etch circuit patterns onto silicon wafers inside chip fabs. Morphotonics instead works on nanoimprint lithography (NIL), which forms fine patterns by pressing a stamp into photosensitive material. TechCrunch reports that the company spent 12 years developing the technology quietly, and that it benefits from drawing on many of the same vendors as ASML.

The technique's strongest current market is waveguides for smart glasses: thin glass or plastic layers that steer light along a defined path so an image appears in front of the wearer's eyes. According to TechCrunch, Morphotonics' machines support production for devices including the Meta Ray-Ban Display, Even Reality and Magic Leap, and have also been applied to privacy screens for cars.

Demand indicators cited in the report point upward. Smart-glasses sales in China doubled in the first eight months of this year, and IDC expects shipments of display-equipped smart glasses to reach 12.2 million units by 2030.

From glasses to data centers

The new funding also backs a push into co-packaged optics, a data center technology built on photonic integrated circuits — chips that move data as light rather than electricity between servers and network equipment. TechCrunch notes that Morphotonics has not yet shipped any machines for this application, although the company says customers have validated the technology.

Scaling the business

CEO Hugo Da Silva, who joined in September 2024, has more than doubled headcount from roughly 30 to 60 during the extended round, and expects staffing to settle between 70 and 75 people.

The company sells equipment to display manufacturers and licenses the accompanying process, training customers and supplying the chemicals they need. About 90% of revenue currently comes from hardware sales, with 10 to 15 systems deployed globally, according to TechCrunch. Morphotonics expects to reach 50 deployments over the next two to three years, which should also lift its services revenue.

Operations are concentrated in Asia, with teams in China, Taiwan, South Korea and the US, which Da Silva framed to TechCrunch as a matter of staying close to customers. The company's next machine, now being built, is designed to produce more than 6 million waveguides per year and is expected to start shipping early next year.

Why it matters

Co-packaged optics is one of the routes data center operators are pursuing to keep pace with the traffic that AI clusters generate, since moving data as light over short server-to-network links holds the promise of lower power draw than electrical interconnects. That shift depends on equipment capable of patterning optical components at volume — precisely the capability Morphotonics has spent over a decade building for consumer optics.

If its NIL platform transfers successfully to this market, the €40 million round adds a European equipment supplier to a supply chain that AI infrastructure buildouts increasingly rely on. It is also a case of a mature deep-tech company redirecting proven production technology toward a larger and faster-growing market rather than betting on untried science.