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Company profile	Akhetonics develops the RPU, a photonic reasoning processor and the first fully optical digital processor. It targets automated reasoning, formal verification and combinatorial optimization: workloads where probabilistic AI falls short and which require deterministic results and single-threaded performance beyond what electronic chips provide. The RPU implements processor, interconnect and memory entirely in photonics. Its optical memory, the first of its kind, removes the bottleneck between compute and storage, and it runs at THz clock rates with deterministic timing. This yields general-purpose compute with higher performance and energy efficiency, built within a European supply chain. Founders: Dr. Michael Kissner (CEO; Dr. rer. nat., mathematical physicist, former Bundeswehr officer) and Dr. Leonardo Del Bino (CTO; PhD Engineering doctorate, formerly Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and NPL). Team: 40+ experts in Munich, Berlin and Freiburg.
Products & Services	The RPU is a general-purpose, fully optical digital processor for workloads that require deterministic execution and high single-threaded performance: SAT/SMT constraint solving, combinatorial optimization, formal and runtime verification, neurosymbolic AI (inference). Processor, interconnect and memory are implemented in photonics; the optical memory provides full arithmetic intensity without the memory bottleneck of electronic chips. Compared with GPUs, the RPU targets orders of magnitude higher performance per watt at a fraction of the thermal output. The RPU is programmable in Python, GLSL and WGSL, with a compiler built on MLIR techniques and Vulkan/SPIR-V as its software stack. Systems come in server, VPX and ATR form factors for aerospace integration (IMA LRU/LRM), designed as a DAL A/B-capable platform with EW resistance and low thermal signature. Deployment ranges from embedded avionics and edge systems to sovereign HPC clusters.
References and export activities	Core Technology validated with lead customers – Funding and support: SPRIND, European Innovation Council (EIC), Intel Ignite
Target group	– Cloud, data centres and AI inference providers – AI Model providers seeking formal verification for model behaviour – Enterprises with large-scale optimisation: finance, logistics, energy – HPC centres – Aerospace and avionics OEMs and space system manufacturers – Developers of physical AI and autonomous systems requiring verifiable behaviour
Competitive advantages	The only general-purpose digital optical computer: other optical approaches are analog, application-specific (AI matrix multiplication, optimisation, FHE), interconnect-only or quantum. Processor, interconnect and memory are implemented entirely in photonics, including the first photonic memory, so no electronic memory limits throughput. Deterministic execution by design. Mature process nodes and a fully European supply chain.
Ideal Business Partners	Channel: server and HPC OEMs, system integrators and resellers for data centre and enterprise deployments; cloud and data centre operators as early access partners. Technology: vendors of SAT/SMT solvers, formal-methods and AI verification tools; Supply chain: European photonics foundries (SiN, InP), packaging and interconnect suppliers. Research: HPC centres and institutes for benchmarking.