Governor Hochul Announces Round Nine Winners of Luminate NY Startup Accelerator and Competition

What this means

Gekko Photonics Awarded $1 Million "Company of the Year" Investment; More Than $2 Million Awarded to Propel Next-Generation Optics, Photonics, and Laser Breakthroughs Applications Now Open for Round 10 of World’s Premier Deep-Tech Accelerator through January 11, 2027 Governor Kathy Hochul today announced Gekko Photonics as the $1 million "Company of the Year" winner in Round Nine of the Luminate NY optics, photonics, and imaging (OPI) accelerator competition. The Wroclaw, Poland-based company secured the top investment at the Luminate NY Finals 2026, held live in Rochester, NY, during Optica’s Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science conference and streamed globally.

Official release

Gekko Photonics Awarded $1 Million "Company of the Year" Investment; More Than $2 Million Awarded to Propel Next-Generation Optics, Photonics, and Laser Breakthroughs

Applications Now Open for Round 10 of World’s Premier Deep-Tech Accelerator through January 11, 2027

Photo of Winning Company Available

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced Gekko Photonics as the $1 million "Company of the Year" winner in Round Nine of the Luminate NY optics, photonics, and imaging (OPI) accelerator competition. The Wroclaw, Poland-based company secured the top investment at the Luminate NY Finals 2026, held live in Rochester, NY, during Optica’s Frontiers in Optics + Laser Science conference and streamed globally. Gekko Photonics will leverage the $1 million follow-on investment—funded by New York State through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative—to accelerate its expansion into the region. The startup plans to build a local operation to manufacture its photonic systems and support industrial customers through installation, integration, service, and ongoing technical support.

“The successful Luminate NY competition is ensuring that New York State continues to lead the nation on cutting-edge technological ideas and research,” Governor Hochul said. “The imaginative winners of the competition’s ninth round represent some of the world's most innovative businesses, bringing transformative products in the optics, photonics and imaging supply chain to market. I congratulate this year’s winners and look forward to all that they will continue to bring to the Finger Lakes region’s renowned OPI ecosystem.”

Gekko Photonics equips manufacturers with inline Raman analyzers that replace delayed lab testing with continuous chemical monitoring. Its Spectrally(TM) platform combines photonic hardware and AI-driven chemometrics to improve process control, reduce waste, and deliver more consistent quality across chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and other process industries.

Gekko Photonics CEO Robert Stachurski said, “Rochester’s photonics expertise makes it a natural place for our company to grow. This funding will help us hire local engineering and customer support talent, work with regional suppliers, and bring our systems into production and deployment more quickly for U.S. customers.”

Read the full press release here.

Release text attributed to New York Empire State Development. Consult the official publication for any subsequent corrections or updates.