$20m · Other round · Software · Oxford, UK
Living Optics has raised $20m in financing to scale global deployment of its computational hyperspectral cameras. British Business Bank said BRV Capital Management led the oversubscribed round. New investors Lockheed Martin Ventures, Applied Ventures, Lam Capital, GK Goh and British Business Bank joined existing backers Octopus Ventures, Foresight Group and OTIF Ventures.
Snapshot imaging moves spectral data onto production lines
Conventional cameras record a small number of colour channels. Hyperspectral systems split reflected light into many wavelength bands, allowing software to distinguish materials, tissue or plant conditions that can look identical in an RGB image. Traditional line-scanning systems build that spectral image over time, which can limit their usefulness when a scene or production line is moving.
Living Optics' visible and near-infrared camera uses a snapshot approach instead. It records 96 wavelength bands from 440 to 900 nanometres at up to 30 frames per second, alongside a five-megapixel RGB stream. The camera weighs less than one kilogram before the lens and can be bundled with NVIDIA edge compute, control software and a Python SDK.
That package is the commercial proposition. Customers still have to collect representative data, train or configure analysis and integrate results into a workflow; a developer-ready camera and software stack can shorten the path from spectral experiment to a deployed inspection system. Real-time capture matters most where the target will not wait for a scanner, such as material moving on a conveyor, changing biological tissue or field observations made from a mobile platform.
Strategic capital raises the deployment test
The company, founded in 2019 from University of Oxford physics research, identifies industrial inspection, defence, life sciences and environmental monitoring as target markets. It has also built a sales and distribution network across Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. In a company-published project note, Living Optics said its technology had been used in trials or research with the UK Armed Forces, Singaporean defence accelerators and NATO science and technology teams.
The investor mix is unusually aligned with those markets: Lockheed Martin Ventures brings a defence lens, while Applied Ventures and Lam Capital are the venture arms of semiconductor-equipment companies. Their participation is not evidence of customer contracts, but it gives Living Optics access to investors familiar with the qualification cycles and technical requirements of industrial hardware.
The round therefore finances a deployment challenge, not only a camera roadmap. Living Optics must turn demonstrations into repeatable production systems, prove that spectral signals remain reliable outside controlled settings, and support integrators across multiple verticals. If the company can make those installations easier to reproduce, hyperspectral imaging can move from specialist laboratories into routine computer-vision workflows.
Sources checked:
British Business Bank press release · Living Optics product page · Living Optics company story · Living Optics Singapore security project note · Living Optics partner network · Living Optics press media kit · Tech.eu Funding Explorer
Image: Living Optics, via the company press media kit.
