Edinburgh‑based Cnuic Technologies has closed a $3 million (about 915 million HUF at current exchange rates) pre‑seed financing round to advance a light‑based photolithography technology for photonic chips. The round was led by the Czech deep‑tech fund Tensor Ventures and Silicon Valley’s Blank Space Ventures, with participation from Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Phasechange, SANDS and Superlative.
Founders and background
Cnuic was founded in April 2025. The founding team comprises David Semmens (founding advisor), Ben Szutor — officially registered as Ben Szutor but referred to in Hungary as Szutor Bence — (co‑founder), Dorian Urban (founding engineer) and Omar Durrani (co‑founder). Szutor holds a majority stake in the company.
Ben (Bence) Szutor is a Forbes 30 Under 30 alumnus (2024). After finishing secondary school in Budapest, he studied at the University of Edinburgh, earning a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and then an EngD (PhD) in laser physics in 2022. In 2022 he joined Skylark Lasers in Scotland as head of R&D; he was promoted to technology director in January 2023 and to CEO in June 2023. He left Skylark Lasers in November 2024 to pursue the new venture, Cnuic.
Details of the financing
The pre‑seed round was oversubscribed: the company initially planned to raise a smaller amount but institutional investors’ minimum ticket sizes led to a final sum of $3 million. At this stage, that is a relatively large pre‑seed round; Forbes previously noted that the Hungarian startup Riptides’s $3.3 million pre‑seed last year was unusually large for the region.
Ondřej Lipold, partner at Tensor Ventures, said in the company’s statement that Cnuic’s technology could “democratize photonic chip manufacturing,” comparable to how personal computers democratized computing power. Martin Drdúl, co‑founder of Tensor Ventures who oversaw the investment together with Lipold, described the solution as a significant deep‑tech breakthrough that could give Europe a new role in the semiconductor industry.
What the product does
Cnuic has built a working prototype of a novel photolithography device that exploits properties of light to enable fast, reconfigurable, three‑dimensional fabrication of photonic chips. According to the company, that capability was previously unavailable and could unlock a new level of photonic chip manufacturing.
Photonic chips use light (photons) instead of electrically charged particles to perform computation and data transfer, which can yield much higher throughput without the same heat generation as traditional silicon processors. That characteristic is particularly relevant to energy consumption challenges in AI infrastructure. The approach also has potential applications across a range of optical technologies, from metalenses and 3D photonic crystals to AR/VR waveguides and flexible photonic structures.
Why this could matter
Cnuic claims the innovation may be the most significant in the field since the invention of the transistor, arguing that silicon‑based chips are approaching their physical limits. Photon‑based processing transmits data with light rather than electrons, offering higher bandwidth and less thermal waste, but mass adoption has been limited by manufacturing complexity and cost. The company’s photolithography method aims to reduce those barriers.
Precise three‑dimensional lattice structures are required to control light on a chip; even small defects or deviations can cause scattering and data loss. If Cnuic’s process can reliably produce such structures at scale, it could reduce cooling and power expenses for large data centers and accelerate AI model training by alleviating communication bottlenecks between thousands of processors.
Customers and next steps
Szutor says the company’s revenues to date came mainly from state‑funded projects and feasibility studies; the venture capital will be used to push toward commercialisation. While specific or prospective clients are confidential, Szutor indicated they include leading global consumer electronics manufacturers whom Cnuic aims to help transition certain circuit functions to photonic solutions.
The pace of product rollout and market traction will depend on industrial validation of the prototype and further commercial partnerships.
