Vexlum Raises EUR 10 M To Scale Semiconductor And Laser Manufacturing To Meet Global Demand

The funding represents the largest Seed round to date for a Nordic photonics company. It includes €6 million in equity led by Kvanted, with participation from Finnish state-owned Tesi and the EIC Fund, a €2.4 million grant from the EIC Accelerator, and a €1.6 million loan from Nordea.

Vexlum, a spin-off from the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at Tampere University of Technology, was founded in 2017 as a DeepTech company specializing in high-power semiconductor laser systems. Its proprietary Vertical-External-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VECSEL) technology tackles a major challenge in high-tech industries: the lack of compact, cost-effective, high-power lasers at precise wavelengths.

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These lasers are essential for applications such as atomic clocks, quantum computers, advanced semiconductor metrology, and free-space optical communication. Vexlum’s technology enables industrial deployment of these systems. The new funding will expand manufacturing capacity and production scale to accelerate adoption in quantum technologies and related fields.

Vexlum’s chip fabrication begins with molecular beam epitaxy, “growing” semiconductor wafers layer by layer at the atomic scale comparable to 3D printing at the atomic level.

Vexlum operates from both Tampere, Finland, and Boulder, Colorado, USA. “Tampere has emerged as a leading hub for optoelectronics and III-V semiconductor technology, building on a strong foundation of world-class academic research and a proven ability to translate it into industrial innovation. This investment round represents a decisive step in scaling our ambitions, securing a leading position for Tampere and Finland in the advanced semiconductor industry,” said Mircea Guina, Chairperson and co-founder of Vexlum.

The new funding will support Vexlum’s growth strategy, aiming for €100 million in revenue by 2030. Currently supplying lasers for trapped-ion quantum computers, the company’s ability to produce lasers across diverse wavelengths also enables applications in satellite optical communications, next-generation optical atomic clocks and other fields requiring precise laser colors.

Jussi-Pekka Penttinen, CEO and co-founder of Vexlum, said, “Securing and scaling our semiconductor fabrication infrastructure is critical for the market’s evolution. It allows us to ensure that the laser quality and reliability meet our customers’ stringent requirements. We are moving beyond boutique production to industrial-scale capability. This funding allows us to bring our semiconductor manufacturing into a new, expanded facility here in Tampere and scale our capacity to meet the demand from the quantum, semiconductor, and space sectors.”

About Vexlum

Vexlum is a Finnish deep-tech company developing high-power semiconductor lasers using proprietary VECSEL technology. Spun out from Tampere University, it delivers compact, powerful and cost-effective lasers for quantum technology, medicine, scientific research, and semiconductors, building on Nobel Prize–linked research in trapped-ion laser systems.