AlphaLum, a Switzerland-based developer of advanced optics and sensing technologies for augmented reality, announced the closing of a CHF 3.4 million seed round led by Vsquared Ventures. Founded as a spin-out from ams OSRAM’s corporate incubator, AlphaLum combines industrial optics heritage with expertise in scaling photonic technologies to become a core supplier for next-generation smart glasses and spatial computing devices.
The smart glasses market shows rising demand but remains constrained by inefficient optical architectures and high power consumption that limit mass production. AlphaLum addresses these bottlenecks with integrated holographic optical combiners and ultra-low-power interferometric laser sensors, enabling higher optical efficiency, lower system cost, and scalable manufacturing. The technology delivers more than 10× higher efficiency than conventional waveguides and supports hands-free AR interaction through an AI-powered motion-sensing platform.
“At AlphaLum, our goal is to make the next generation of smart glasses truly wearable – not as prototypes, but as scalable products. By solving the low efficiency of transparent display technologies and always-on constraints of vision-based sensing, we enable our partners to bring interactive, everyday AR to market at scale. With this round, we are preparing the next phase of industrialization and strengthening our role as a core technology supplier for future smart glasses platforms,” said Markus Rossi, CEO and Co-founder of AlphaLum.
“AlphaLum is building foundational technology for one of the most important computing transitions ahead. Smart glasses are already a reality – the next step is to make them available at scale. AlphaLum is the player targeting the technological bottlenecks to enable this, and we are looking forward to partnering on this journey,” said Benedikt von Schoeler, General Partner at Vsquared Ventures.