Opdo raises $2.3M pre-seed to put AI agents inside optical design
Angular Ventures leads a $2.3M pre-seed in Opdo, whose AI agents work inside Zemax and CODE V, in a design software segment LP Information forecasts at $237M for 2025.
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Berlin, Germany
Opdo, an AI-driven optical engineering startup based in Berlin and Los Angeles, raises $2.3 million in pre-seed funding led by Angular Ventures to put AI agents inside the optical design software engineers already use.
Angular Ventures leads $2.3 million for a five-person optics team
Opdo raises $2.3 million, about €2.1 million at the ECB rate of 1.1052 dollars per euro on November 13, 2026, in a pre-seed round reported on November 12, 2026 by Tech.eu and Tech Funding News. Angular Ventures led the round, and Inflection and Tiny.vc also invested.
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The company has five people, according to Tech Funding News. The money goes to the engineering team, tooling and the first steps toward in-house production, with optical designers, photonics engineers and metrologists on the hiring list. Tech.eu adds that Opdo will develop its AI tools and take on more customer projects.
Two xolo alumni and an AI co-pilot for Zemax and CODE V
CEO Stephan Kuehr co-founded 3YOURMIND, a manufacturing automation company, and later served as chief commercial officer at xolo, which makes machines that produce optical elements. CTO Yousef Arzhangnia led software at xolo, and that is where the two met. 3YOURMIND’s customers include the US Department of Defense, Ford and Bosch, according to Tech Funding News.
Opdo’s AI agents work inside Zemax and CODE V, two established optical design programs. Its first product, an AI co-pilot that turns a prompt into a manufacturable optical system, launched in June 2025. A partnership with Luximprint on 3D-printed optics followed in November 2025.
Customers can order prototypes and finished parts from Opdo, and the stated goal is full vertical integration, manufacturing included. What sets the company apart, by its own account, is a feedback loop in which data from manufactured and tested parts goes back into its models. Opdo says this cuts development and manufacturing cycles from months to weeks, a claim we have not been able to verify. The work spans laser and imaging systems, micro-optics and nanostructured surfaces.
“Every hardware team we talk to has an optics problem waiting in line,” Kuehr told Tech.eu.
A $237 million software niche growing 9 percent a year
Optical design software is a small segment. LP Information’s report “Global Optical Design Software Market Growth (Status and Outlook) 2025-2031”, published in January 2024, forecasts the market at US$237 million in 2025, rising to US$398 million in 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 9.0 percent over 2025-2031. It is a forecast, written before the period it describes began.
Opdo also sells prototypes and finished parts, which reaches into the hardware budgets those design tools serve, and its use of funds points toward in-house production.
Our own records give the amount some scale. Lightspring raised a seed of about €3.1 million on September 22, 2026 for photonic chips. Salience Labs closed a $125 million Series B to wire AI clusters with light on October 15, 2026. Opdo’s $2.3 million sits at the early end of that spread, sized for a five-person team taking its first steps toward production.
Physical AI reaches the lens bench
Both named investors frame the bet in similar terms. Jerry Dischler, partner at Angular Ventures, told both outlets that optics is one of the last deep engineering disciplines AI has barely touched. Alexander Lange of Inflection told Tech Funding News that the next frontier in applied AI will be physical.
The incumbents are moving the same way. Tech Funding News lists Keysight’s CODE V 2026, which adds an AI Start Expert feature, and Ansys Zemax, now owned by Synopsys, with its own AI assistants. Startups are in the race too, among them Photonium, a YC-backed company building AI for optics EDA, and Axiomatic AI, which raised $18 million for AI verification in semiconductors and photonics.
What we are seeing is a company whose agents run inside software owned by two vendors that now ship assistants of their own. That is a delicate place to build a business. Opdo’s answer, on its own account, is the data from parts it makes and tests itself.
The stage is the other signal. A pre-seed check into a team of five that plans to make its own parts is an early bet on a company that wants to own the factory step as well as the software.
Hires, customer projects and first parts are the milestones to watch
From the outside, the next milestones will be the optical designers, photonics engineers and metrologists Opdo hires, the customer projects it takes on, and the first parts from its own production. The months-to-weeks claim becomes testable once customer projects and first parts are public. Our fundraising data desk lists this round alongside the others we record.
Opdo has five people, agents that run inside Zemax and CODE V, and a production step that so far exists as a hiring plan. Let’s watch what comes off the line!
