Company Profile: Cailabs
Corporate Overview
Cailabs is a French "deep-tech" company that specializes in the design, manufacture, and sale of innovative photonic solutions. Founded in June 2013 as a spin-off from the Kastler Brossel Laboratory (a joint research unit of the CNRS, ENS, and Sorbonne University), the company is headquartered in Rennes, France.
Cailabs is globally recognized for its mastery of light shaping, specifically through its patented Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC) technology. This core innovation allows for the precise manipulation of the shape, phase, and intensity of laser beams. By "cleaning up" or reformatting light, Cailabs enables higher performance in telecommunications, improves the precision of industrial laser manufacturing, and facilitates ultra-high-speed laser communications between Earth and satellites.
Continue…The company maintains a strong international presence with offices in Paris, France and Washington D.C., USA, and has raised over ?100 million in funding to scale its optical ground station production and global expansion.
Core Technology: Multi-Plane Light Conversion (MPLC)
The foundation of every Cailabs product is MPLC. Traditional optical systems often struggle to maintain beam quality when light travels through turbulent media (like the atmosphere) or complex fibers. MPLC uses a series of reflective phase-shaping planes to transform a beam into any desired spatial mode or to combine multiple beams into one without significant power loss.
Products and Services
Cailabs categorizes its offerings into three primary industrial verticals: Aerospace & Defense, Industrial Laser Processing, and Fiber Networks.
1. Aerospace & Defense (Laser Communications)
Cailabs is a pioneer in Free-Space Optical (FSO) communications, which use lasers instead of radio waves to transmit data through the air or vacuum.
- TILBA?-OGS (Optical Ground Stations): A turnkey solution for satellite-to-ground laser links. These stations allow for data transfer speeds exceeding 10 Gbps, bypassing the spectrum licensing constraints and congestion of traditional RF (Radio Frequency) communications.
- TILBA?-LOS (Line of Sight): Terminals designed for point-to-point laser communication over land, sea, or air, capable of maintaining stable 10+ Gbps links over distances exceeding 10 km.
- Atmospheric Turbulence Mitigation: Utilizing the TILBA?-ATMO module, Cailabs can "fix" laser signals distorted by air turbulence without the need for complex moving parts like adaptive optics mirrors.
- Laser Combining (TILBA?-CBC/IBC): Technologies that combine multiple laser sources to increase transmission power and range, essential for deep-space missions and secure defense communications.
2. Industrial Laser Processing (CANUNDA)
In manufacturing, the shape of a laser beam determines the quality of a cut, weld, or 3D-printed part. The CANUNDA product line provides beam-shaping modules to optimize these processes.
- Laser Welding & Cutting: The CANUNDA-PULSE and CANUNDA-PRO modules shape the laser into a "Top-Hat" or ring profile, which stabilizes the melt pool during welding and significantly reduces spatter in metal processing.
- Laser Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing): By shaping the beam, Cailabs helps upscale 3D printing (Laser Powder Bed Fusion), allowing for faster production speeds while maintaining the structural integrity of the metal.
- Micro-Processing: The CANUNDA-USP (Ultra-Short Pulse) range is designed for femtosecond lasers, allowing for high-precision drilling and glass processing without thermal damage or "tapering."
3. Fiber Networks (PROTEUS & AROONA)
Cailabs solves bandwidth bottlenecks in both legacy and future-generation fiber optic networks.
- PROTEUS (Spatial Mode Multiplexers): These devices enable Space Division Multiplexing (SDM), allowing multiple channels of data to be sent simultaneously through a single optical fiber by using different "modes" of light. This technology has enabled world records in fiber capacity (up to 10 Pb/s).
- AROONA: A solution for local area networks (LANs) that allows old, low-capacity multimode fibers (typical in factories, universities, or hospitals) to perform like high-speed single-mode fibers. This enables a 100x increase in data throughput without the need to dig up and replace existing cabling.
Key Achievements and Milestones
- 2015: Enabled a new world record for optical fiber capacity in collaboration with KDDI.
- 2022: Awarded the Keraunos contract by the French Defense Innovation Agency to experiment with satellite-to-ground laser links.
- 2024: Successfully established a laser link between a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) nanosatellite and a commercial optical ground station?a world first.
- 2025: Secured a ?57 million financing round led by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to accelerate global deployment of its space communication infrastructure.
