eyeo today announced it has raised €40 million in Series A funding, bringing eyeo’s total funding to €55 million.
The round is led by Innovation Industries, with participation from existing investors imec.xpand, Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, QBIC fund, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Brabant Development Agency (BOM).
eyeo has developed the world’s most advanced nanophotonic color-splitting technology, redefining imaging for consumer, industrial, XR, smart city and mobile applications with color-splitting photonics technology that triples light sensitivity and breaks sensor resolution limits, delivering unprecedented picture quality, color accuracy and resolution.
The fresh funding will accelerate eyeo’s sensor design capabilities, deepen its OEM partner ecosystem, and drive commercial deployment across a $30 billion global imaging market.
A new era for imaging:
All seven billion image sensors sold each year, across smartphones, autonomous vehicles, XR devices, industrial machines, smart cities and more, share a fundamental flaw: color filters work by rejection, blocking red, green and blue light in turn and discarding 70% of the light in the process.
eyeo’s Nanophotonic Color Splitting (NCOS®) technology platform works differently. Instead of filtering light, it splits it: separating light into its colors and guiding every photon directly to the pixel where it belongs. Backed by 26 patents, the NCOS® platform triples light sensitivity and breaks resolution limits. This breakthrough approach unlocks picture quality, color accuracy, resolution, and cost efficiency, which was never-before possible.
Compatible with existing CMOS sensor platforms, eyeo’s technology unlocks sub-micron pixels with 3x the light for ultra-compact, high-performance imaging, removing the trade-off between image quality and sensor size that has constrained product design for decades.
From breakthrough science to production-ready sensors:
This Series A round marks a decisive step forward in eyeo’s commercialization journey. Building on the foundation established and proven at imec over the last seven years, multiple tier one customer engagements, and successful process integration at a commercial foundry, eyeo is now investing in the full in-house engineering capability required to deliver sensors to customers at volume scale. The funding will be deployed across three strategic priorities:
- Building a world-class IC and system architecture design team at the Antwerp sensor design center opened earlier this year
- Developing and releasing next-generation color-splitting image sensors in 3D-stacked CMOS technology
- Growing sensor sales and commercial partnerships with OEM customers across smart city, industrial, XR and mobile markets worldwide
Jeroen Hoet, co-founder and CEO, eyeo, said: “Every modern device that sees the world, from smartphones to autonomous systems, is held back by the same 50-year-old constraint. eyeo removes it at the source. Our technology is proven, patented and validated at a commercial foundry, with tier one customers already engaged. This €40 million round gives us what we need to scale.”
Nard Sinteni, Partner Innovation Industries, said: “eyeo is delivering the kind of foundational breakthrough that redefines an entire category. This is a powerful example of DeepTech innovation driving real structural progress in semiconductors, with implications that extend across the broader technology ecosystem. We’re excited to back this outstanding team and their superior technology, which is truly pioneering in its approach and sets a new benchmark for what’s possible in the field.”
Dr Anne Umbach, Senior Investment Manager at HTGF, commented: “eyeo’s technology captures three times more light than any conventional image sensor, unlocking a level of image quality that simply wasn’t possible before. When we first invested, we believed this team had the science, the vision and the drive to become a true European DeepTech champion. Less than a year later, a €40 million Series A speaks for itself. This is exactly the kind of follow-on moment that validates everything we look for in a DeepTech investment.”
This operation benefits from the support of the European Union under the InvestEU Fund.
