Max Widarsson, Svenska Laserfabriken
Svenska Laserfabriken won the QSIP Innovation Competition 2025. Now, the company is focusing on a new product line.
– We are going from prototype to sellable product, says founder and CEO Max Widarsson.
Today, five people work at Svensk Laserfabriken’s office in Stockholm. They optimise and commercialise crystals that change the colour of lasers, and which are used in quantum technology to make entangled photons.
Encouraged by the prize sum of 300k from winning the QSIP Innovation Competition, they are also developing a quantum communication detector in a way that fits better into existing data centres.
– It has allowed us to focus more into our new product line which is a detector for 1550 nm. With the prize money we could do a first prototype and test it with two separate potential customers. One in Italy and one in Germany, says Max Widarsson and continues:
– The focus right now is to convert the prototype to a sellable product and get the first sales on the detector. We already have multiple companies interested in multiple units, but this requires us to improve the specs a bit.
What is the next step, looking ahead?
– Improve the specs and package the driving electronics for the detector into a single unit. This is not for free, so we are looking at some other soft funding and trying to get early sales to give some funds dedicated to this product. Early sales will also show the customers willingness to pay, says Max Widarsson.
Text and photo: Jonas Löfvendahl
Three facts!
• The company
Svenska Laserfabriken started as a spin-out company from KTH. The company is committed to being the leading center for nonlinear optics and lasers. They produce periodically poled KTP crystal (PPKTP) and devices based on PPKTP. Read more!
• The competition
QSIP Innovation Competition 2025 was organised by the Swedish quantum network QSIP, with Chalmers Industriteknik as host organisation, and funded by Vinnova. Total prize sum of 1,5 MSEK.
• The winners