MetaOptics, a semiconductor optics company specializing in metalens technology, has secured an investment facility of up to $10 million from White Lion Capital, a Los Angeles-based firm. Under a warrant deed signed with White Lion, the company may raise up to $10 million through the issuance of up to 40,000,000 new ordinary shares, contingent on White Lion exercising the warrants at its own discretion. White Lion is the first U.S.-based institutional investor to participate in MetaOptics' growth, something the company frames as strong validation of its technology, solutions, and commercialization roadmap.
The investment comes about a year after MetaOptics listed on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange, and follows a period of strong commercial momentum, including design and evaluation requests from major customers and sample units already shipped. White Lion's participation extends MetaOptics' investor base beyond Asia and into the U.S., which is the company's largest end market.
The proceeds from the facility, once the warrants are exercised, will help accelerate MetaOptics' expansion in the U.S. White Lion's investment will support ongoing projects with U.S. customers across consumer devices, co-packaged optics (CPO), and optical interconnects, and will also help fund the establishment of the company's first front-end semiconductor fabrication line in the U.S., equipped with 12-inch deep ultraviolet (DUV) immersion photolithography equipment for mass-producing metalenses and modules. Building this fabrication line is meant to bring key metalens design, manufacturing, and testing capabilities onshore to the U.S., closer to American customers, while also providing a clearer, faster path toward securing purchase orders for mass production.
The U.S. represents a key market for metalens adoption, driven by consumer electronics, AR/VR wearables, automotive sensing, and the multi-billion-dollar co-packaged optics industry serving AI data centers. MetaOptics is currently working with several U.S. foundries to integrate its metalenses into their CPO designs. The smallest CPO metalens the company has designed measures just 0.1mm, and that design can be scaled up using a 12-inch semiconductor photolithography process on glass substrates, a key step for mass production.
Thng Chong Kim, executive chairman of MetaOptics, said securing the company's first U.S. institutional investor is an important step, noting that many of MetaOptics' most important customers, from consumer device brands to companies building CPO and optical interconnects for AI data centers, are based in the U.S. He said this funding lets the company move faster on those customer projects and bring key metalens technology onshore to the U.S.
Gabriel Gumbiner, senior associate at White Lion, said MetaOptics is one of the few companies in the world capable of designing, mass-producing, and testing glass-based metalenses at scale. He said White Lion is particularly pleased that its first investment in a Singapore Exchange-listed company is with an organization of MetaOptics' caliber, describing the company as having a strong management team with a clear growth vision, and said White Lion is proud to support MetaOptics as it expands into the U.S. market.
