Heptagon, the Finland-based developer of wafer-scale micro-optics, announced that it has raised over $22m in new equity financing. Most of this financing is coming from a new syndicate led by GGV Capital. Heptagon’s current investors, including Innovations Kapital of Sweden, Innovacom of France and Nokia Growth Partners have also participated in this latest round.

“Heptagon has a truly unique and proven value proposition: Optics which are glass-like in quality, being lead-free reflow and Telcordia compatible, but manufactured in the same wafer-scale format as the CMOS image sensor, LED and VCSEL technologies we support. This technology allows us to quickly ramp from several millions to several tens of millions of components per month and enables our customers to benefit from wafer-scale integration of optics with semiconductors,” says Chuck Milligan, Heptagon’s CEO. “This is leading to exponential growth in the demand for our products in applications such as CMOS Image sensing. We have introduced several new products this year, including 2 and 3 megapixel camera lenses. These new products increase our addressable market by an order of magnitude and therefore drive the need for a significant capacity expansion for which part of this new equity investment will be used.”

“We are extremely pleased,” Chuck continues, “to have been able to raise this investment despite the currently challenged investment environment. This is a testament to our strong leadership position in this industry-changing technology. We are also very excited with the quality and commitment of our new investors. GGV Capital and partners have a fantastic track record and will add great experience and knowledge of consumer electronics and Asian manufacturing to Heptagon’s investor base and board.”

Scott Bonham, founder and managing partner of GGV Capital, says ”We believe that wafer-scale optics is a technology whose time has come and which has the potential to revolutionize first the CMOS image sensor market and then other semiconductor photonics markets. Heptagon is the clear leader in this space with several years of volume production with market-leading customers, rapid growth and a very exciting product roadmap. We are looking forward to supporting the Heptagon team in continuing this growth and making wafer-scale optics the dominant optics technology in semiconductor-based opto-electronic modules.”

About Heptagon
Heptagon designs and manufactures advanced micro-optics products for OEM suppliers. Heptagon's components are used in many applications including CMOS imaging, LED optics, display, optical communications, consumer electronics and industrial optics. Heptagon is headquartered near Zurich, Switzerland and has its volume manufacturing facility in Singapore.