Austrian DeepTech startup Invisible-Light Labs raises €1.5 million to identify sub-micron particles

Jun 9, 2026 - 10:01

Vienna-based Invisible-Light Labs, a TU Wien spin-off developing infrared analysis technology for nanoscale materials, has closed a €1.5 million pre-Seed round in order to accelerate the international commercialisation of the company’s flagship product, EMILIE, and support the development of new products for environmental monitoring, pharmaceutical analysis, and nanotechnology applications.

The round was co-led by XISTA Science Ventures and aws Gründungsfonds, with participation from Fund F.

“EMILIE combines the high sensitivity of nanomechanical sensing with the wide availability of infrared spectrometers. This funding will allow us to bring this new capability into more hands, from researchers developing new nanoparticle-based drugs and nanomaterials to atmospheric scientists working at the Earth’s poles,” says Dr. Josiane P. Lafleur, CEO and co-founder, Invisible-Light Labs.

Taken together, 2026 funding activity point to about €60.5 million in disclosed funding across adjacent DeepTech areas including nanomaterials, materials science software, environmental sensing, photonics, advanced materials, climate-industrial technologies and quantum/semiconductor hardware.

Within that context, Invisible-Light Labs’ round is smaller than the Seed and Series A financings reported for companies such as Chiral, Vitrealab and Groove Quantum, but it sits in a comparable pattern: European university-linked or science-led startups raising capital to move specialised physical technologies from laboratory validation towards commercial deployment.

The presence of two other Vienna-based 2026 examples – Vitrealab and sequestra – also places the company within a visible Austrian DeepTech funding context.

“We have been deeply impressed by how the founding team of ILL has translated strong scientific insight into an exceptional technology and product, now being co-marketed with Bruker, the market leader in its field. Achieving this with limited resources speaks to the team’s capabilities, focus, and drive. We are excited to support ILL in the next stage of its journey,” adds Dr. Alexander Schwartz, Partner XISTA Science Ventures.

Invisible-Light Labs is a DeepTech company spun out of TU Wien in 2019, the company commercialises nanoelectromechanical Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (NEMS-FTIR), a measurement technology that delivers picogram-level chemical identification of sub-micron particles, aerosols, and samples available in very limited quantities.

Founded by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Silvan Schmid, Dr. Josiane P. Lafleur, Dr. Niklas Luhmann, and Dr. Hajrudin Bešić, Invisible-Light Labs combines nanoelectromechanical sensing technology with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to enable chemical analysis of nanomaterials and materials available in extremely small quantities across industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to environmental monitoring.

Its flagship product EMILIE, also sold jointly with Bruker Optics as BRKR-EMILIE, is a commercially available NEMS-FTIR analyzer.

The company says nanomaterials such as aerosols, nanoplastics, and nanopharmaceuticals are becoming increasingly important in environmental health, consumer safety, advanced therapeutics, and semiconductors.

At the same time, conventional analytical methods are often inadequate to chemically characterise such materials at the relevant scale in a short measurement time. Invisible-Light Labs aims to address this gap with a new generation of highly sensitive and easy-to-use tools.

Invisible-Light Labs entered a strategic partnership with Bruker Optics in 2025 to expand the global availability of the co-branded EMILIE system.

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