telescopes
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Diffraqtion
Diffraqtion is a Somerville, Massachusetts deeptech company building what it calls the first quantum camera for satellites and telescopes. Spun out of research at MIT and the University of Maryland, its photon-counting sensors paired with AI aim to extract far more information from incoming light than conventional CMOS or CCD sensors, letting smaller, cheaper optics see beyond the diffraction limit. The company targets space domain awareness, defense, and Earth observation, and raised $4.2M in pre-seed funding in January 2026 alongside a DARPA SBIR contract.
Johannes Galatsanos
Johannes Galatsanos is Co-Founder and CEO of Diffraqtion, a Boston-based quantum imaging startup that has built a quantum camera capable of recovering 95% of photon information lost by conventional sensors - translating to 20x higher resolution and 1,000x faster image processing than any existing optical system. A multilingual MIT and Oxford graduate with Greek-German roots, Galatsanos pivoted from leading AI and data transformation at Novartis to commercializing a decade of DARPA- and NASA-backed quantum photonics research. Diffraqtion won first prize at SLUSH 2025, secured a $4.2M pre-seed round in January 2026, and is targeting satellite launches for space domain awareness and Earth observation by 2028-2029.