Agate Sensors, a startup developing smart sensors for material analysis, has raised €5.6 million to commercialize a breakthrough that shrinks spectroscopy from suitcase-sized lab equipment to a single pixel smaller than a grain of sand – integrated into a chip compact enough to sit on your fingertip. The Finnish startup’s technology allows devices to analyze the spectral signatures of materials in real time, bringing high-precision material sensing out of the lab and into everyday devices, from smartphones and wearables to medical equipment and defense systems. The round includes €4M in seed funding led by Voima Ventures and LIFTT, plus €1.6M in grants from Business Finland.
Agate Sensors was founded in 2024 as a spin-out from over a decade of pioneering research by the Photonics Group of Prof Zhipei Sun at Aalto University’s Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering.
Spectral vision extends far beyond the three color bands visible to the human eye. By distinguishing hundreds of bands at once, Agate’s sensors give machines a kind of “superhuman” vision, enabling them to perceive details and distinctions invisible to conventional cameras.
“We’ve taken a spectrometer once confined to specialized labs and made it small and affordable enough to live inside everyday devices,” said Tommi Leino, CEO of Agate Sensors. “One sensor can shift between functions entirely through software — from diagnosing a health condition to detecting, identifying, and classifying objects and materials — changing how we interact with the physical world.”
Manufacturing of initial chips is expected by year-end, enabling proof-of-concept demonstrators throughout 2026 and first commercial smart wearable products targeted for late 2027.
“This funding allows us to commercialize a technology that fundamentally changes how machines perceive the world,” said Mikael Westerlund, CBO of Agate Sensors. “We’re not just building sensors, but enabling a new layer of light-based intelligence.”
Agate Sensors’ software-defined spectroscopy platform reads the “spectral signatures” of materials through light analysis.
“This technology is the result of over a decade of research in semiconductor physics and nanotechnology at Aalto University,” said Dr. Andreas Liapis, CTO of Agate Sensors. “For the first time, we are able to bring laboratory-grade spectroscopy to an integrated form factor suitable for mass market use.”
“Agate Sensors’ platform is a leap forward in hyperspectral sensing: software-defined, scalable, and truly high-performance,” said Niko Elers, Investment Director at Voima Ventures. “It holds immense potential to reshape industries that rely on precise optical measurement, and we are very excited to support the company on the journey ahead.”
As AI and autonomous systems demand richer environmental understanding, Agate’s platform opens new dimensions in machine vision, enabling applications from multi-biomarker health monitoring in wearables, to detecting counterfeit goods in supply chains, identifying environmental hazards in industry, early intervention in smart agriculture and forestry, and more. These smart sensors capture rich spectral data and use advanced algorithms powered by AI to identify objects and classify materials in real time, allowing machines to see and understand their surroundings beyond what is possible by human vision, and to share this intelligence across networks for coordinated analysis.
Defense is among the earliest market-ready applications. For example, the sensors can distinguish between real foliage and synthetic camouflage materials, or identify specific vehicle types through their paint signatures.
“We believe this innovation will play a critical role in strengthening Europe’s technological sovereignty in defense and security,” said Pierluigi Freni, Project Manager at LIFTT. “For the first time, we have a technology capable of mass deployment that allows machines to understand what they see. This changes everything we know about spectral data usability and usage. We confirm our trust and belief in the Finnish innovation ecosystem, in which we have decided to continue investing together with LIFTT Euroinvest, the investment vehicle we share with the European Investment Bank”.
