Phaseform has closed a €1.1 million seed round with private investors and MBG Baden-Württemberg. The money goes into manufacturing: scaling up production of the Deformable Phase Plate product line, from devices built one at a time to a repeatable process.
Phaseform makes transparent adaptive optics (AO) components that adjust their surface with extreme precision to counteract the imperfections of an optical system. “Although AO is the de-facto standard in astronomy, its commercial success in other fields such as life science microscopy, ophthalmology and optical inspection has been limited due to a lack of affordable and easy-to-implement solutions,” says Dr. Stefan Weber, CEO of Phaseform. Dr. Pouya Rajaeipour (CTO) adds, “We have solved this problem with our technology.” Maximilian Dreher, investment manager at MBG: “Phaseform is a highly innovative startup with cutting-edge technology to enhance the performance of optical systems.”
The goal is to apply the scalable technology to a wide range of imaging and beam-forming applications, bringing decades of adaptive optics research to fruition. Closing the round was supported by BadenCampus (www.badencampus.de), an accelerator and innovation platform for the start-up ecosystem of the southern Upper Rhine.
About Phaseform: Phaseform was spun off in 2020 from the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) of the University of Freiburg by a team of engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs. It has previously received funding from “EXIST Transfer of Research” and “Start-up BW Pro-Tect”.
About MBG: MBG invests in small and medium-sized enterprises based in Baden-Württemberg, across all sectors, with seed, start-up and growth financing for young and established companies. It is a publicly and privately funded investment company that works closely with Bürgschaftsbank Baden-Württemberg GmbH and is supported by the state of Baden-Württemberg and the German federal government.
Contact:
Phaseform: Dr. Stefan M. Weber, +49 761 21608000, [email protected], www.phaseform.com
Phaseform GmbH, Georges-Köhler-Allee 302, 79110 Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
MBG Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg GmbH, Werastraße 13-15, D-70182 Stuttgart, Germany
