metasurface
(3)
Neurophos
Neurophos is an Austin-based photonics startup building an Optical Processing Unit (OPU) that uses light instead of electrons to run AI inference. Spun out of Duke University and the Metacept incubator, the company packs more than a million micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators - roughly 10,000x smaller than conventional photonic elements - onto a single chip to perform the matrix-vector multiplication at the heart of large AI models. It positions the OPU as an energy-efficient, drop-in alternative to GPUs for data-center inference, and raised a $110M Series A led by Gates Frontier in January 2026.
Lumotive
Lumotive is a Redmond, Washington optical-semiconductor company that turns beam steering into a chip. Its patented Light Control Metasurface (LCM) technology uses thousands of tunable liquid-crystal optical resonators etched into a CMOS die to steer light electronically - no moving parts - powering solid-state LiDAR, 3D sensing, and, soon, optical switching for AI data centers. Spun out of Intellectual Ventures and Bill Gates-backed metamaterials research, the company sells programmable beamforming chips like the LM10 to sensor and systems makers rather than building full LiDAR units itself.
Metalenz
Metalenz is a Boston-based deep-tech company that replaces stacks of curved glass lenses with a single flat, nanostructured semiconductor chip called a metasurface. Spun out of Harvard's Capasso Lab, it is the first company to mass-produce meta-optics, shrinking cameras and sensors for smartphones, biometrics, and 3D sensing. Its flagship Polar ID brings polarization-based, payment-grade face authentication to devices at a fraction of the size and cost of existing systems.