La Luce Cristallina Wins Manufacturer of the Year Award from U.S. Small Business Administration, San Antonio District

AUSTIN, Texas, April 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- La Luce Cristallina today announced it has won the Manufacturer of the Year Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), San Antonio District, selected from a competitive field of small businesses spanning 55 counties. The award recognizes the company's development of high-performance barium titanate (BaTiO₃) materials for silicon photonics and its contributions to the local business and technology community. La Luce Cristallina's recent milestones position it to address growing demand for high-performance optical interconnects driven by AI infrastructure, cloud computing and next-generation data center architectures.

The Manufacturer of the Year award underscores the company's achievements over the past year, including the opening of its state-of-the-art fabrication facility in Austin, TX, and the introduction of its flagship 200-mm BaTiO₃ wafer (now in beta availability) to support the data communications, telecommunications, sensing, quantum computing and integrated photonics markets. La Luce Cristallina also recently launched its CMOS-compatible oxide pseudo-substrate and showcased its solutions portfolio at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference, engaging with prospective customers and partners across the optical ecosystem.

Championed by the Texas State University Small Business Development Center, a $3.3 million SBA 7(a) loan enabled the company to acquire specialized equipment, scale manufacturing capabilities, accelerate product development and advance commercialization of its electro-optic modulator platform for high-density optical networks. The award recognizes La Luce Cristallina's progress in facilitating materials science innovation and spurring economic growth as a small manufacturer in the local Austin, Texas, technology ecosystem.

"This recognition drives us to keep pushing boundaries in the world of silicon photonics through barium titanate-based solutions that offer the potential for lower power consumption than traditional silicon photonics modulators while addressing integration challenges and other common bottlenecks," said Alex Demkov, CEO and Co-Founder, La Luce Cristallina. "The SBA's funding has proven essential in furthering our work, enabling us to manufacture wafer-based solutions that support high-speed optical interconnects and other critical use cases in today's AI-driven tech ecosystem, all from our local community here in Texas."

La Luce Cristallina will receive its award during National Small Business Week on May 7, 2026, at the Norris Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas. Visit this site for more details.

About La Luce Cristallina

La Luce Cristallina (LC) is a manufacturer of silicon-integrated, high-performance materials for silicon photonics, focused on barium titanate (BaTiO₃)-based platforms enabling electro-optic modulators for next-generation optical interconnects. The company's technology supports high-speed, low-power data transmission across AI infrastructure, cloud data centers and telecommunications networks. By advancing CMOS-compatible BaTiO₃ materials, La Luce Cristallina is driving the transition beyond traditional silicon toward more scalable, energy-efficient photonic solutions that support accelerating datacom and network infrastructure demands.

La Luce Cristallina Contact
Rowshanak Irani
+1 737 781 0325
[email protected]

Media Contact
Jeannette Bitz, Engage PR
+1 510 295 4972
[email protected]

SOURCE La Luce Cristallina