Luminate Finals 2025

Startups in cohort 8 of the Luminate accelerator are using light-based technologies to reshape how we live, work, and understand our world. Whether you're passionate about science, entrepreneurship, or bold ideas, Luminate Finals 2025 will challenge what you think is possible and reveal what’s in our future.

Join us at the historic and elegant Arbor Midtown for Luminate's annual showcase and awards ceremony, sponsored by SPIE. Come curious. Leave inspired.

• See which startups are awarded a piece of $2 million in follow-on funding, with a grand prize of $1 million for Company of the Year!
• Vote live for your favorite team to help them bring home this year's Audience Choice Award and $10,000.
• Network among entrepreneurs, startup supporters, and members of Rochester's vibrant innovation ecosystem.
• Stick around for the SPIE Jam, starting at 7:00 PM at the same venue.

Luminate Finals 2025 is a free, hybrid event open to the general public. Doors open for in-person attendees at 4:00 PM and the program kicks off at 4:30.

Click through to tickets to select in-person or virtual attendance.

— Specializing in the design and development of Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for Quantumcom, Datacom and Telecom.

— The first 3D SWIR Multispectral Perception solution—long range and high resolution—to optimize resources and reduce carbon footprint.

— Groundbreaking solid-state, shape shifting, tunable optical lens technology that facilitates optical zoom in a shorter compact camera module (CCM) stack.

— Designing and developing metasurface image sensor technology, enabling camera technologies that go beyond current technological limitations.

— Designing and fabricating advanced meta-optics, laser and imaging applications.

— Creating novel 3D imaging technology for industrial applications and medical devices, including the world’s first portable colposcope able to produce high-resolution 3D images to assist in early-stage detection and analysis of pre-cancer cervical lesions.

— Redefining photon detection with Superconducting Nanowire Single Photon Detectors (SNSPD).

— Pushing the boundaries of optics and photonics with on-chip nanostructures.

— Creating next-generation semiconductor thin films (quantum materials, smart glass) based on innovative deposition source technology and core IP.

— Developing simple, fast, and affordable optical measurement of reflective surfaces at nanometric precision.

Thank you to SPIE for sponsoring Luminate Finals this year! SPIE Optifab 2025, organized jointly by SPIE and APOMA, is taking place October 20-23 down the street from Finals at the Joseph A. Floreano Rochester Riverside Convention Center. The SPIE Jam will commence an hour after Finals wraps.

Host or Publisher Luminate