The EIC Accelerator Backed NIL Technology's Lenses: Did It Work

NIL Technology, known as NILT, started in 2006 as a maker of the nanoscale stamps that other companies use to imprint patterns into polymer. In October 2019 the European Innovation Council selected it to become something else: a supplier of flat lenses for the 3D sensors in phones and cars. The EIC Accelerator pilot grant for its SUPERvisionary project was €2,270,000 towards a €3,242,860 project, and the award came as blended finance, a grant plus an equity offer from the new EIC Fund. The equity was invested: the EIC Fund joined NILT's €26 million Series B in February 2021, according to optics.org and the EIC Fund's own portfolio page.

Less than four years later the company was sold. Radiant Opto-Electronics, a Taiwanese maker of backlight modules for displays, agreed in September 2024 to buy all of NILT for €284.7 million, according to Taiwan's Central News Agency, and completed the deal in January 2025, according to investor Jolt Capital. The EIC's website now carries the founder's description of the sale as "the first significant exit by EIC".

Where NILT Stands Now

NILT is active, but no longer independent. The Danish company register, as shown by ownr and FirmaAPI, lists Radiant Opto-Electronics as sole owner from 3 January 2025, with two Radiant representatives, Wang Yu-Chao as chairman and Chiang Ping-Yu, on the board. Jolt Capital dates the completion to 6 January 2025, and the Taiwanese news site 1111 reported the deal as completed on 13 January 2025.

The founder has left the top job. Theodor Nielsen signed the 2025 annual report as chief executive on 30 June 2026. The register now lists Thomas Haals Løndorf as chief executive and board member from 1 September 2026 and no longer lists Nielsen in the management or on the board, according to both ownr and FirmaAPI. Neither NILT nor Radiant has published an announcement of the change that could be found.

The price is reported four ways. Radiant's announcement, as reported by the Central News Agency and UAnalyze, gave €284.7 million, about NT$10.2 billion. Danish engineering weekly Ingeniøren wrote DKK 2.2 billion, Øresund Startups "over €250 million", and 1111 "about €300 million", the figure Nielsen also gives in the EIC's success story. The €284.7 million is the only figure attributed to Radiant's own announcement.

The Technology: Lenses Made of Nanostructures

A conventional camera or sensor lens bends light with curved glass or plastic, and a good one stacks several of them. Flat optics do the same job with a pattern of structures smaller than the wavelength of light on a flat surface. Diffractive optical elements, the subject of the EIC project, split or shape a laser beam; one use is the "fan-out" that projects a grid of infrared dots for face recognition. Metalenses, NILT's product focus today, go further and focus light like a lens. Ingeniøren reports that NILT can make one flat lens that replaces four curved ones, by pressing a stamp into a polymer and etching the pattern into a silicon film on glass.

The difficulty has always been efficiency and cost at volume. Flat optics lose light that curved lenses do not, and nanostructures are hard to make cheaply. NILT's argument is that its background in imprint stamps lets it mass-produce them by nanoimprint lithography instead of slower chip-style lithography. In its May 2024 funding release the company cited a paper it described as published in Nature Communications Physics, showing the gap between theoretical and measured metalens performance closing; NGP Capital's copy of the release repeats the claim.

What SUPERvisionary Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The European Commission's list of companies selected at the 9 October 2019 cut-off names NIL Technology ApS of Kongens Lyngby with SUPERvisionary and blended finance; no other company is listed for the project. CORDIS adds NILT's Swiss affiliate, NILT Switzerland GmbH in Horgen, as a linked third party with €295,750 of the grant. The project ran for 24 months from 1 March 2020 to 28 February 2022, and the grant agreement was signed on 3 April 2020.

The objective on CORDIS was to move NILT up the value chain: from selling stamps ("masters") to offering optical design, replication and testing of diffractive lenses for 3D sensing, and so to "establish NILT as the leading global partner for advanced optical elements". The final report says every milestone was reached on time and "all the objectives of the project were met or exceeded", and that spending exceeded the planned budget. It is the company's own account; no independent evaluation is published.

1. Optical design and test serviceDeliveredDesign time cut by more than 90% and an optical lab built, per the report; NILT sells design and prototyping today, per NGP Capital.
2. Mastering service for optical elementsDeliveredStandard processes for silicon masters and replication tools in place, per the report.
3. Pilot replication lineDeliveredPrototyping line and basic clean room "fully operational", per the report.
4. Record fan-out efficiencySelf-reportedNILT reported 94% field-of-illumination efficiency; no independent measurement found.
5. More than 150 staff by 2025Not reached43 average full-time employees in the Danish company in 2025; about 90 group-wide, per Ingeniøren.

The services the grant paid for exist and the company kept growing on them, so the project counts as delivered. Two points are weaker. The report names no customer that bought diffractive lenses at volume, saying only that "several potential customers have been testing samples". And the forecast of more than 150 employees by 2025 was missed by a wide margin.

What NILT Achieved After the Grant

The money followed. A €6.3 million Series A from Jolt Capital and NGP Capital in December 2018, reported by Tech.eu and optics.org, had funded the shift to optics. The €26 million Series B of February 2021 was co-led by Jolt, NGP and the Danish state fund Vækstfonden, with the EIC Fund taking part; law firms Linklaters and Accura both advised the EIC Fund on that investment. The €10 million EIC equity figure comes only from Nielsen's account on the EIC website; the size of the EIC Fund's stake and its exit proceeds have not been published.

In December 2022 the European Investment Bank signed €15 million of venture debt for NILT under InvestEU, expecting about 100 skilled jobs. In May 2024 NILT raised €29 million led by EIFO, Jolt, NGP and Swisscanto Private Equity, according to its press release and Nordic 9; Nielsen later called it a €33 million round on the EIC website. The two figures were not reconciled in any source found.

On products, NILT launched metaEye, a metalens camera of 1.64 by 1.64 by 2.2 millimetres for eye tracking and sensing, in January 2024, according to Optica. In January 2026 the eye-tracking firm Pupil Labs announced a pilot partnership to build the camera into a forthcoming product. On Radiant's 30 July 2026 earnings call, summarised by Fugle, management said eye-tracking modules would start shipping to several medical customers in the fourth quarter of 2026, that metalenses made up 0.2% of second-quarter revenue, and that its Pingzhen plant in Taiwan was preparing for customer validation in 2027.

The Money

The Danish company has lost money every year since at least 2019 and reports a gross loss, so its sales do not cover its external costs; revenue itself is not disclosed. Its accounts switched from Danish kroner to euros in 2022. In euros, filed with the Danish Business Authority, the net loss totalled €77.5 million from 2021 to 2025.

The 2025 loss of €35.2 million includes €16 million of acquisition-related costs, "primarily" the settlement of financing obligations and warrants, the annual report says. Bank debt of €9.8 million at the end of 2024 was gone a year later, replaced by €23.6 million owed to group entities, and equity fell to minus €1.06 million. The report says the company is "fully supported" by Radiant, which is what keeps it going.

Why Europe Should Care

Optics and photonics sit next to chips in the EU's technology policy: the European Chips Act, in force since 21 September 2023, aims to build European capacity in semiconductor design and manufacturing, and nanoimprint lithography is a semiconductor-style process. NILT was the kind of European supplier those policies want: EU research funds, an EIC grant, EIC equity, EIB debt and Danish state capital all went into it.

It is now Taiwanese-owned. The sale bought out its investors, the EIC Fund included, though what each received has not been published, and Nielsen said on the EIC site that NILT would "continue to be anchored in Europe", citing planned investment in European equipment and facilities. Radiant's own plan, though, prepares metalens volume production at its plant in Taiwan. Whether the manufacturing the EU helped build stays in Europe is the open question.

The Verdict

NIL Technology, Radiant Opto-Electronics and the EIC Fund have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.