Metalenz, the world leader in metasurface optics, today announced it has partnered with leading semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corporation ("UMC") to release its direct supply chain to mass production and bring the unrivaled scale and precision of semiconductor manufacturing to the optics industry. The announcement marks the launch of metasurface optics on the open market for the first time and follows multiple design wins for Metalenz with leading OEMs in Asia.

"After initially designing meta-optics in partnership with one of the leading suppliers of 3D sensing solutions, we are now engaged with OEMs directly to bring the benefits of metasurface optics to their 3D sensing applications. By partnering with a world-class foundry like UMC, we gain the manufacturing capabilities, expertise, and global reach to serve customers interested in adopting our meta-optics technology," said Rob Devlin, Co-founder and CEO of Metalenz. "This will further accelerate our growth as we are becoming the leading provider of precision optics for 3D sensing solutions.""Our state-of-the-art 12-inch facilities and decades of experience in semiconductor manufacturing has made us the foundry partner of choice for some of the most advanced fabless semiconductor companies in the world. Our expertise and scale will enable Metalenz to effortlessly scale up production to meet the growing demand for its meta-optics products," said Raj Verma, Associate Vice President of Technology Development at UMC. "In the more-than-Moore era, UMC is focused on strengthening our specialty technology leadership to enable a wide range of 5G, IoT, and automotive applications. This collaboration will enable UMC to expand our offering into meta-optics and play a pioneering role in delivering this disruptive imaging technology to market."

The partnership between Metalenz and UMC is expected to yield significant benefits for both companies and their customers. Metalenz's meta-optic technology has the potential to revolutionize the field of optics, enabling the design of smaller, lighter, and more efficient optical systems. With the manufacturing capabilities provided by UMC, Metalenz will be able to accelerate the development of its meta-optic products and bring them to market more quickly as a direct supplier to OEMs.

The first designs to go through the newly established supply chain will be for Chinese OEM DiluSense.

"As one of the most innovative suppliers of 3D sensing systems for IoT devices and consumer electronics, we have been looking for better optics for years. We are excited to work with Metalenz, as their metasurface technology enables new optical form factors and performance that will further differentiate some of our most advanced 3D sensing AI solutions." - Hu Lei, DiluSense Founder and CEO