Photonium YC Application

Spring 2025Active

Photonium went through Y Combinator in the Spring 2025 batch as a B2B company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Spring 2025
Industry: B2BEngineering, Product and Design
Team size: 3
Status: Active
Launched: 2025

Founders

Jennifer SongFounder
Adam MhatreFounder

What Photonium does

Photonium is building software to automate optical system design. We supercharge optics experts with intelligent tooling to reduce costs and deliver faster. We handle the full design stack - from optimization, verification, sourcing, to prototyping - for AR/VR, quantum, biotech, metrology/chip fab, LiDAR, and more.

Photonium's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Photonium, Spring 2025 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Photonium

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

AI-Powered Optical Consulting & Software

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We're building software that automates optical system design. Our product helps optics engineers optimize, verify, source, and prototype designs for complex fields like AR/VR, quantum tech, biotech, metrology, and LiDAR. It compresses a process that normally takes weeks or months into days, by combining AI with domain expertise embedded in the workflow.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We currently live in New York City and plan to keep the company based here after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

We chose New York City because of its concentration of optics-focused industries and proximity to clients in biotech, manufacturing, and engineering. It also aligns with where we live and work now, which keeps us agile.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Photonium YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Photonium's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Photonium would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.