{"id":90808,"title":"Photonium: AI-Accelerated Optical Design Automation ⚛️","tagline":"Design optical systems faster and cheaper.","body":"Hey YC!\n\nWe’re [Jennifer](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-y-song) and [Adam](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-mhatre-5b8aaa230/) - cofounders of Photonium.\n\n**TL;DR**\n\nPhotonium automates optical system design with AI, replacing costly manual iteration with end-to-end system optimization.\n\n**🚨 The Problem**\n\nOptical systems are mission-critical across many high-growth sectors — including quantum technology, biomedical imaging, LiDAR for defense and autonomous vehicles, and metrology for semiconductor fabrication.\n\nBut designing them is a nightmare:\n\n* Companies pour millions into teams of 20+ optical engineers\n* Projects take months or years to go from R\u0026D to production\n* Tools are fragmented and outdated\n* Optimization is manual and often based on trial-and-error\n\nEngineers spend countless hours on repetitive workflows — constrained by tools that haven’t changed in decades.\n\n**⚙️ Our Solution**\n\nPhotonium is building the electronic design automation (semiconductor EDA) for optics. We work with complex optical setups across industries and handle the entire design process — from system generation and optimization to simulation, tolerancing, and sourcing.\n\nPhotonium enables companies to:\n\n* Generate and optimize designs from product specs\n* Predict tolerance impacts without slow simulations\n* Recommend data-driven alignment and manufacturing tweaks\n* Optimize for cost, size, and performance trade-offs\n* Seamlessly integrate with existing CAD workflows and optics simulation tools\n* Automate the full design-to-sourcing pipeline\n\n[Launch Video](https://youtu.be/YvX3Xr2_Gt8)\n\n**🚀 The Team**\n\nJennifer studied physics, math, and CS at Harvard and built quantum optics experiments across Harvard, Stanford, and QuEra (a Google-backed quantum computing startup).\n\nAdam studied computational physics at Stanford, and worked on plasma simulation for fusion and large-scale astrophysical modeling of black holes.\n\nWe’ve both felt the pain of inefficient engineering design firsthand — and built Photonium to fix it.\n\n⚛️ **Why This Matters**\n\nOptical systems are foundational to cutting-edge technologies, from quantum computing to semiconductor fabrication. Yet, outdated tools and fragmented workflows slow innovation and inflate costs. We hope to eliminate these bottlenecks and accelerate innovation across industries.\n\n📣 **Our Ask**\n\nIf you know anyone working with lasers and optics in any context, we’d love to chat! Contact us at [founders@photonium.ai](mailto:founders@photonium.ai)\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=90808\u0026key=user_uploads/2467765/c27811f3-aa01-4860-9682-d3136973df3e)\n\n","slug":"Nce-photonium-ai-accelerated-optical-design-automation","created_at":"2025-05-28T19:10:45.827Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T02:57:52.580Z","total_vote_count":51,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Nce-photonium-ai-accelerated-optical-design-automation","share_image_url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/media/?type=post\u0026id=90808\u0026key=user_uploads/2467765/c27811f3-aa01-4860-9682-d3136973df3e","company":{"id":30465,"name":"Photonium","slug":"photonium","url":"https://www.photoniumoptics.com/","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/1f9f89a3e11065395408b656b79f12f0fd9868a1.png","batch":"Spring 2025","industry":"B2B","tags":["Hard Tech","Hardware","Machine Learning","B2B","Manufacturing"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/30465"}}