Boulder, Colorado — October 15, 2026. EMode Photonix has closed a $1.0 million pre-seed funding round led by Ground State Ventures, with participation from Harlow Capital Management. The round is the startup’s first institutional capital after five years of non-dilutive SBIR support from NIST, NSF and NASA and revenue from commercial software sales.
Co-founded in 2021 by CEO Eric Stanton (former NIST postdoc and UC Santa Barbara researcher) and Maiya A. S., EMode Photonix develops a multi-physics simulation platform tailored for non-linear integrated photonic circuits (PICs). The company says its stack combines proprietary computational modeling techniques, newly derived frequency conversion equations and a novel 3D method for interfacial scattering loss to model fabrication-realistic geometries and materials.
EMode Photonix reports that its simulation stack delivers up to a 1,000x speedup versus traditional non-linear photonics modeling workflows while coupling thermal, radio-frequency (RF) and non-linear optical dynamics in the same simulation.
EMode Photonix technology and roadmap
The platform enables engineers to model complex classical and quantum light transformations on chip, including non-linear frequency conversion, parametric and dissipative effects, and squeezed-light generation. EMode positions the product to scale from academic R&D into an enterprise CAD stack for quantum photonic hardware development, with a commercial roadmap targeting a single-day PIC design suite.
The new capital will fund expansion of the company’s engineering team in Boulder and accelerate rollout of an enterprise software offering intended to automate functional photonic integrated circuit design within a single day for markets including quantum computing, optical sensing and telecommunications.
Ground State Ventures led the round, with participation from Harlow Capital Management. The company is supported by industry veterans including Chad Rigetti, Kris Kaczmarek, Colby Harlow, Nic Weiroster, Martin SFP Bryant and Ton van ’t Noordende. The company referenced LinkedIn posts by Ton van ’t Noordende, Eric Stanton and Colby Harlow and lists open roles on its Careers Portal.
