AI-Driven Optical System Design
Hey YC!
We’re Jennifer and Adam - cofounders of Photonium.
TL;DR
Photonium automates optical system design with AI, replacing costly manual iteration with end-to-end system optimization.
🚨 The Problem
Optical systems are mission-critical across many high-growth sectors — including quantum technology, biomedical imaging, LiDAR for defense and autonomous vehicles, and metrology for semiconductor fabrication.
But designing them is a nightmare:
- Companies pour millions into teams of 20+ optical engineers
- Projects take months or years to go from R&D to production
- Tools are fragmented and outdated
- Optimization is manual and often based on trial-and-error
Engineers spend countless hours on repetitive workflows — constrained by tools that haven’t changed in decades.
⚙️ Our Solution
Photonium is building the electronic design automation (semiconductor EDA) for optics. We work with complex optical setups across industries and handle the entire design process — from system generation and optimization to simulation, tolerancing, and sourcing.
Photonium enables companies to:
- Generate and optimize designs from product specs
- Predict tolerance impacts without slow simulations
- Recommend data-driven alignment and manufacturing tweaks
- Optimize for cost, size, and performance trade-offs
- Seamlessly integrate with existing CAD workflows and optics simulation tools
- Automate the full design-to-sourcing pipeline
🚀 The Team
Jennifer studied physics, math, and CS at Harvard and built quantum optics experiments across Harvard, Stanford, and QuEra (a Google-backed quantum computing startup).
Adam studied computational physics at Stanford, and worked on plasma simulation for fusion and large-scale astrophysical modeling of black holes.
We’ve both felt the pain of inefficient engineering design firsthand — and built Photonium to fix it.
⚛️ Why This Matters
Optical systems are foundational to cutting-edge technologies, from quantum computing to semiconductor fabrication. Yet, outdated tools and fragmented workflows slow innovation and inflate costs. We hope to eliminate these bottlenecks and accelerate innovation across industries.
📣 Our Ask
If you know anyone working with lasers and optics in any context, we’d love to chat! Contact us at founders@photonium.ai
