MicroAlign's EIC Accelerator Fiber Arrays for Photonic Qubits

In a photonic quantum computer the qubits are single photons, and every one lost where a glass fiber meets a chip is a qubit gone. MicroAlign, an Eindhoven spin-off of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), builds the part that sits at that junction: a fiber array, a row of optical fibers fixed in a glass block, in which each fiber has been moved into place by its own micro-actuator while light runs through it. The company says its 24-channel arrays hold the fiber cores to 100 nanometres, against about 0.5 micrometres for the conventional V-groove arrays.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, QABLE, at its October 2025 cut-off for blended finance. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,499,743.17 for "Ultra-Accurate Optical Fiber Arrays for Photonics Quantum Computers and Beyond", running from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2028, and lists no total cost. The award includes an equity component, according to The Quantum Insider and IO+; neither gives its size, and no MicroAlign entry could be found for the EIC Fund in a search on 4 November 2026.

Moving every fiber on its own

A conventional fiber array is aligned passively, with each fiber laid in a V-shaped groove, and the company's website describes that method as limited by imperfections in core positioning. MicroAlign aligns actively instead. According to IO+, a MEMS actuator moves each fiber, the light is measured in real time, and UV-curing glue fixes each fiber in place; CTO Marco Fattori told IO+ that "alignment time is the same, whether you have 12, 24, or 48 fibers", a few minutes per array. CORDIS describes the tool as a comb of micro-actuators that moves each fiber independently at nanometre resolution.

The technology came out of a doctoral project at TU/e within the NWO-funded MEMPHIS II programme, Silicon Canals reported, and the company had four patents by June 2024, Fattori said at the seed round. In 2025 the company gave a core position accuracy of better than ±100 nm, per Silicon Canals, and the same 100 nm figure for its 24-channel arrays in December 2025, per PhotonDelta and Vision Systems Design.

How much better that is depends on who is quoting it. Bits&Chips wrote in November 2025 that the arrays are aligned with tenfold higher accuracy and 75 times lower fiber-to-chip coupling loss than traditional methods. IO+ wrote in March 2026 that the precision is three to five times better than conventional alternatives. The company's own figures, 100 nm against 0.5 µm, work out to a factor of five. None of the sources above gives a measured coupling loss for a specific product: the CEO told The Quantum Insider that "a <0.5 dB optical-coupling target is no longer a niche request", and the company website speaks of loss "down to the last precious 0.1 dB" without a test report.

From selling a tool to making the part

MicroAlign did not start as a component maker. In its first two years it tried to sell the MEMS alignment tool itself, IO+ reported, but customers would have had to share detailed chip designs with it, and the company switched to making fiber arrays. Its first public funding, from PhotonDelta and the Smart Industries TTT Fund managed by Innovation Industries, was for improving fiber-to-chip connections in packaging, with datacom, telecom, sensing and lidar named as applications, Wiley Industry News reported in December 2021. By the June 2024 seed round, quantum photonic computing was the lead market, per PhotonDelta.

The channel count has grown in step. The company announced 24-channel arrays in December 2025, doubling its earlier 12, and IO+ reported in March 2026 that 36- and 48-channel versions were in development. The Quantum Insider and IO+ both report a plan to introduce arrays with channel pitches down to 127 µm during 2026; no release of that product could be found on the company's news page on 4 November 2026, whose most recent posts, from July 2026, are technical articles and event notices.

Customers, in the plural and unnamed

The commercial record rests on what the company has told journalists. Bits&Chips reported in November 2025 that MicroAlign had delivered 100 fiber arrays to paying customers that year and was preparing a 500-square-metre production facility by 2026, able to make up to 100,000 arrays a year. IO+ wrote that some early customers are quantum computing companies. CORDIS says the product was developed with potential customers and cites technical validations and letters of intent from "leading quantum computer manufacturers". None of these sources names a customer, and no opening of the 500-square-metre facility could be found in the trade press or on the company's site on 4 November 2026.

The project's scale argument is also the company's: CORDIS quotes it as saying a single large-scale photonic quantum computer will need "more than €1 million worth of fiber arrays", and IO+ that such a machine would need thousands of them. MicroAlign aims to support "a significant share" of photonic quantum computing systems worldwide by 2029, per The Quantum Insider and Bits&Chips. Its website now also lists AI data centres, co-packaged optics and optical I/O, and the CEO named MEMS switches, wavelength-selective switches and optical amplifiers as non-quantum uses.

Small rounds, then a larger EIC grant

The disclosed private money is modest. DeepTechXL and PhotonVentures led a €1 million seed round in June 2024, per PhotonDelta and The Quantum Insider, and Brabant Startup Fonds added €350,000 with support from TU/e's KTO The Gate, Silicon Canals reported in September 2025. The amount of the 2021 investment by PhotonDelta and the Smart Industries TTT Fund was not disclosed. The Quantum Insider also lists Capital 819 and TU Eindhoven among investors, and NWO, BSF and Rabobank as financing partners. Bits&Chips reported in November 2025 that the company was preparing its next funding round for the second half of 2026; no such round could be found in a search on 4 November 2026.

The balance sheet figures shown by Liza.nl, a Dutch business-data site that reproduces filed accounts, put equity at minus €372,206 at the end of 2023, €722,110 at the end of 2024 and €473,060 at the end of 2025, with debts of €1,158,307 at the end of 2025. No turnover is shown. These figures could not be checked against a second source or against the filing at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. CORDIS lists the company at Het Eeuwsel 57 in Eindhoven; the company's website gives Horsten 1 as its visiting address and Het Eeuwsel 57 in its footer. The qable.io website listed for the award in the EIC winner table belongs to an unrelated software testing firm.

1. Actively aligned arrays at nanometre accuracyReported24 channels at 100 nm, per the company in December 2025.
2. Paying customersUnnamed100 arrays delivered in 2025, per Bits&Chips; no customer named in any source found.
3. Industrial production, TRL 6 to TRL 8Too earlyQABLE began on 1 July 2026; no CORDIS report yet.
4. Facility for up to 100,000 arrays a yearPlanAnnounced for 2026; no opening reported.
5. Arrays with 127 µm pitch in 2026Not seenNo product release found on the company's news page.

A Dutch part for a European quantum plan

The European Commission's Quantum Europe Strategy of 2 July 2025 sets the goal of making the EU a global quantum leader by 2030, with quantum chip pilot lines among its actions, per the Commission's summary. MicroAlign's arrays address the fiber-to-chip connection of photonic quantum computers, and PhotonDelta has been an investor since 2021. In its CORDIS summary the company frames the EIC money as de-risking investment by European private venture capital. Whether its arrays end up in European or in foreign quantum computers is not public, because its customers are not.

The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.