Investors / United States / Luminate
Luminate
Accelerator · Rochester, NY, United States · North America
Luminate is a business accelerator for startups with optics, photonics, imaging, and laser-enabled technologies. It brings founders into the Rochester, New York region and provides investment, mentoring, workshops, lab facilities, and introductions to investors.
Invests inHealthcare & BiotechIndustrial & ManufacturingAI & Machine Learning
In its own wordsopticsphotonicsimaginglasersdeep techhardware
Your fit with Luminate
Four questions about your startup
See how your round matches what it backs, point by point.
Or find every investor that fitsLuminate lists 69 checked portfolio companies on its own site and is named in 4 funding rounds, 1 of them as lead. Its most frequent entry is Seed, 50% of the companies with a known first round. Its largest themes are Healthcare & Biotech (29%), Industrial & Manufacturing (27%) and AI & Machine Learning (23%). 56% of its companies are based in United States. It invests most often alongside SDH Capital, Capital Factory and Silicon Catalyst.
Counts come from funding rounds that name Luminate, complete from mid-2025: earlier rounds appear only when they were reported later. Round amounts and full round histories are on Fundup AI.
Round figures show recent activity, not Luminate's whole history. Rounds on record name 4 companies; its own site lists 69. Funding rounds are complete from mid-2025, so counts and the yearly trend undercount a firm that invested before then. The portfolio, themes and places come from its own site and are not affected.
Entry stage
share of companies by the stage of its first roundLuminate does not state its stages on its site, so only what it does is shown.
Show as a table
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Pre-seed | 0% |
| Seed | 50% |
| Series A | 25% |
| Series B | 0% |
| Growth | 25% |
Activity by year
rounds it joined, last 10 yearsShow as a table
| Total | Rounds it led | |
|---|---|---|
| '17 | 0 | 0 |
| '18 | 0 | 0 |
| '19 | 0 | 0 |
| '20 | 0 | 0 |
| '21 | 0 | 0 |
| '22 | 0 | 0 |
| '23 | 0 | 0 |
| '24 | 0 | 0 |
| '25 | 1 | 0 |
| '26 | 3 | 1 |
Investor profile
percentile among all firmsShow as a table
| Measure | Percentile of all firms | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio size | 90th | 69 companies |
| Recent activity | 76th | 3 rounds in 12 months |
| Early stage | 73th | 50% of entries at pre-seed or seed |
| Evidence | 61th | 4% of companies confirmed by a round |
| Sector focus | 48th | 29% in its largest sector |
| Reach | 97th | 12 countries |
Investment themes
share of its checked companiesThis firmAll checked companies
Show as a table
| This firm | All checked companies | |
|---|---|---|
| Healthcare & Biotech | 29% | 15% |
| Industrial & Manufacturing | 27% | 7% |
| AI & Machine Learning | 23% | 18% |
| Robotics & Hardware | 5% | 1% |
| Consumer | 5% | 3% |
| Space & Defense | 3% | 3% |
| Cybersecurity | 3% | 4% |
| Education | 3% | 7% |
Invests most often with
firms sharing its portfolio companiesShow as a table
| Share | |
|---|---|
| SDH Capital | 4 |
| Capital Factory | 3 |
| Silicon Catalyst | 3 |
| imec.istart | 3 |
| AQAL Capital | 2 |
| GOOSE Capital | 2 |
| IndieBio | 2 |
| Qbic | 2 |
Its portfolio companies
where they are based, and what their own sites showSite status
- Site answers69100%
- No longer answers00%
- Points to another company00%
- Parked or sold domain00%
A site that stops answering three checks in a row is counted as no longer answering; that is not proof of closure. A site that points to another company is often an acquisition.
Co-investor network
who it backs companies with, and who they back togetherCompare Luminate head to head
portfolio size, rounds, entry stages, themes and the companies both backThree or more firms at once: portfolio overlap.
Recent portfolio activity
when companies last raised with Luminate| Date | Company | Stage |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Sept 2026 | Series C+ Led | |
| 6 Aug 2026 | Seed | |
| 10 Apr 2026 | Seed | |
| 3 Jan 2025 | Series A |
Round details for Luminate
Amounts, full round histories and every co-investor in Luminate's rounds are on Fundup AI. VCinfo covers investors and their portfolios.
Portfolio
69 companies checked against their own sites| Company | What it does | Themes | First round with it | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2EyesVision creates, develops and markets innovative technologies in ophthalmology | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| AB Photonics designs, manufactures, and tests compact picosecond laser systems for instrument manufacturers | Industrial & Manufacturing | Portfolio page | ||
| Alertgy develops non-invasive blood glucose monitoring technology | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| The company produces photonic integrated circuits for various applications. | Industrial & ManufacturingCybersecurity | Portfolio page | ||
| AquaRealTime provides real-time water quality monitoring systems | Enterprise SoftwareHealthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| Arovia makes ultra-rugged, collapsible, eye-safe displays for multiple uses. | Enterprise SoftwareIndustrial & Manufacturing | Portfolio page | ||
| Augmentiqs delivers all the power of digital pathology directly to the glass slide and live field of view | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| Bounce Imaging develops and manufactures cameras and related software for public safety and defense applications | Industrial & ManufacturingAI & Machine Learning | Portfolio page | ||
| Brightlight Photonics develops CMOS-compatible laser sources for biomedicine, metrology, and quantum technologies. | Healthcare & BiotechIndustrial & Manufacturing | Portfolio page | ||
| Ciconia Medical introduces the first medical device to replace the vaginal exam during labor | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| Circle Optics engineers panoramic imaging solutions for advanced applications | AI & Machine LearningAI & Machine Learning | Portfolio page | ||
| The company provides a digital wound management solution using AI-supported wound analysis and documentation | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| Custom Surgical develops and sells digital tools and hardware for medical professionals to record and manage data from microscopes and slit lamps. | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| Diamond Quanta commercializes an engineered-diamond interface platform to improve performance and enable practical manufacturability and integration within existing industrial ecosystems. | Industrial & ManufacturingConsumer | Portfolio page | ||
| Dottir Labs develops sensor systems for real-time detailed chemical analysis of water for various industries | Industrial & ManufacturingAI & Machine Learning | Portfolio page | ||
| Double Helix Optics develops and provides 3D imaging and sensing technology for scientific research and innovation | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| Dynocardia develops a wearable and connected platform technology for monitoring blood pressure and other vital heart and lung functions | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| EmGenisys analyzes embryos to improve pregnancy outcomes in animals using data-driven and machine learning technologies. | AI & Machine LearningAI & Machine Learning | Portfolio page | ||
| The company makes materials that produce light for various industries, including medical and solar energy solutions. | Industrial & ManufacturingHealthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page | ||
| The company develops high-performance instrumentation and assay content for bioanalysis. | Healthcare & Biotech | Portfolio page |
About this data
site last read 13 Nov 2026- Site
- luminate.org
- Last read
- 13 Nov 2026
- Watching since
- 6 Nov 2026
- Rounds since
- 3 Jan 2025
- Companies checked
- 69
Rates come from what VCinfo has observed since observation_start. Firms tend to remove companies that closed, so early rates understate reality. A company leaving a portfolio page does not mean it closed or exited. An unreachable site means our checks failed, nothing more.
Get Luminate's profile as data
Pull Luminate's portfolio, co-investors and changes through one API key or MCP, open every portfolio row, compare it with other firms, and get an email when it adds a company or files a fund.
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$ curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
https://api.vcinfo.io/v1/firms/luminate.org
# also
GET /v1/firms/luminate.org/portfolio
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