Espoo-based Agate Sensors, a startup developing smart sensors for material analysis, has raised €5.6 million. The funding will help commercialise 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 a fingertip. The round includes €4 million in seed funding led by Voima Ventures and LIFTT, along with an additional €1.6 million in grants from Business Finland.
Founded in 2024 as a spin-out from Aalto University, Agate Sensors is pioneering chip-scale spectral sensing technology that merges photography, hyperspectral imaging, and biosensing into a single platform. Backed by leading scientific research and patents, the company enables light-based intelligence across healthcare, defence, environmental monitoring, and consumer electronics.
Unlike conventional cameras limited to three colour bands, Agate’s sensors distinguish hundreds simultaneously, giving machines “superhuman” vision to reveal details invisible to the human eye.
As demand grows for richer environmental awareness in AI and autonomous systems, Agate’s platform expands machine vision into new domains. Its smart sensors capture spectral data and, powered by AI, classify materials and objects in real time. This unlocks applications ranging from health monitoring in wearables to counterfeit detection, environmental hazard identification, and smart agriculture. By sharing this intelligence across networks, machines gain a deeper, more coordinated understanding of their surroundings, surpassing human vision.
Tommi Leino, CEO of Agate Sensors, said: We’ve taken a spectrometer once confined to specialised labs and made it small and affordable enough to live inside everyday devices. 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.
Initial chip production is expected by year-end, with proof-of-concept demos in 2026 and the first commercial smart wearables planned for late 2027. “This funding allows us to commercialize a technology that fundamentally changes how machines perceive the world, added 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.
Dr. Andreas Liapis, CTO of Agate Sensors, explained: “This technology is the result of over a decade of research in semiconductor physics and nanotechnology at Aalto University. For the first time, we are able to bring laboratory-grade spectroscopy to an integrated form factor suitable for mass market use.”
Niko Elers, Investment Director at Voima Ventures, added: “Agate Sensors’ platform is a leap forward in hyperspectral sensing: software-defined, scalable, and truly high-performance. 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.”
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.
Pierluigi Freni, Project Manager at LIFTT, commented: “We believe this innovation will play a critical role in strengthening Europe’s technological sovereignty in defense and security. 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.”
The funding round will accelerate production of chip-scale sensors that give any camera the ability to instantly analyze what it sees, from food and health checks to counterfeit detection and critical defense applications.
