Lightspring is a Besançon-based French deep-tech company developing optical interfaces for photonic integrated circuits.
Photonic chips use light to transmit and process information, but connecting those chips to fibres, lasers and other components can be a difficult manufacturing step. Lightspring applies 3D lithography directly onto the chip to create optical interfaces, with the objective of making photonic packaging more reproducible and easier to manufacture at scale.
The company was founded in 2026 by Grégoire Bonnat, Adrià Grabulosa and Daniel Brunner and emerged from the research ecosystem around FEMTO-ST and CNRS. Its technology uses two-photon polymerisation to produce three-dimensional optical structures.
This post covers:
- What Lightspring does
- Its September 2026 seed round and public financing
- The path from research to industrialisation
- What its funding journey shows for deep-tech entrepreneurs
The September 2026 financing
On 22 September 2026, Lightspring announced a €3.1 million seed round led by Atlantic and OVNI Capital. Concept Ventures, Ixcore, Plug and Play Ventures and industry business angels also participated.
At the same time, the company announced that it had been selected as a laureate of France’s national i-Lab DeepTech innovation competition and had received a €350,000 grant.
Together with additional public innovation funding, Lightspring says it has secured more than €3.5 million in dilutive and non-dilutive financing.
The financing will support the transition from laboratory technology to industrial production. Plans include developing the company’s process design kit and design tools, expanding the team, working with industrial partners and qualifying the fabrication process for industrial use.
Public and private funding working together
Lightspring’s financing is particularly illustrative because equity investment and public innovation support arrived around the same industrialisation milestone.
The €3.1 million seed round provides private capital from specialist venture investors and business angels. The €350,000 i-Lab grant adds non-dilutive public funding. Together with other public innovation financing, these sources have taken the company’s financing above €3.5 million.
This combination is especially relevant to deep-tech startups, where moving from a scientific result to a commercial product can require substantial investment before significant revenues are generated.
What Lightspring’s funding journey shows
Lightspring illustrates how public funding can help bridge the gap between scientific research and private investment.
For a deep-tech company, a technology may be scientifically promising long before it is ready for industrial customers. Grants and innovation programmes can help finance development and validation during this period, while venture capital can provide additional resources when the technology is ready to move towards commercialisation.
The September 2026 round is therefore connected to a specific transition: moving the company’s 3D optical coupling technology from the laboratory towards production.
For entrepreneurs commercialising scientific research, this suggests the value of building a funding strategy around technical milestones. Instead of treating fundraising as a single event, founders can map grants, public programmes, seed investment and later venture capital against the development stages their technology must reach.
Lightspring also demonstrates the importance of explaining the industrial problem behind a deep-tech solution. Its funding story is not only about photonics; it is about addressing a manufacturing bottleneck and creating a route towards scalable production.
Founders working on deep-tech, scientific or industrial technologies can learn more about identifying and structuring funding opportunities through the Fundingtrip courses.
About the author of this post
.
Sara Gavidia
Content Creator
Communications Manager & Content creator
LinkedIn
[email protected]
.
Hello! I’m Sara 👋🏻
I’m FundingTrip’s Content creator. I write posts about technology, funding and innovation. If you liked this one, subscribe to our newsletter to receive more updates!
Post reviewed by David Arias, funding expert.
