Meet the 3 winners of inaugural Design AI and Tech Awards

(From left) SUTD’s Tai Lee Siang, Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information and National Development Tan Kiat How, LionsBot’s Tan Wei Hua, Sengkang General Hospital’s Moarie Grace Tan and Jeff Tang, MetaOptics Technologies’ Aloysius Chua, and The Business Times editor Chen Huifen / Photo credit: Winston Chuang

Semiconductor optics startup MetaOptics Technologies, autonomous cleaning robot firm LionsBot, and Sengkang General Hospital clinched top honors at the inaugural Design AI and Tech Awards (DAITA).

Organized by The Business Times and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the competition aims to spur startup and enterprise innovators to develop groundbreaking solutions using design and tech.

DAITA was launched in October 2024 with multiasset investment firm Granite Asia as a supporting partner.

MetaOptics swept away the judges with its color metalens imaging system that features a single-glass layer alternative to traditional curved plastic lenses, which typically use several layers.

“The challenge today with traditional three-dimensional optics is the bulkiness, complexity, and high costs,” said deputy CEO Aloysius Chua in his presentation.

Metalenses, also known as flat optics or 2D lenses, are single layers of glass made up of millions of circular pillars with varying diameters at the same height, he explained.

MetaOptics uses semiconductor fabrication techniques to etch millions of microscopic pillars onto glass wafers. / Photo credit: MetaOptics Technologies

“MetaOptics is the first company to produce a single-layer metalens on a 12-inch glass wafer, working in visible light wavelengths and integrated into a camera to capture a color image,” said Chua.

The startup’s proprietary AI software sharpens and improves the vibrancy of the images captured and uses a brightening algorithm that lights up dark areas without overexposing brighter sections.

As the lenses are fabricated and assembled in Singapore, Chua told The Business Times that the team wants the city-state “to be the excellence center of metalenses.”

“We want to control the design, and we want the key manufacturing supply chain to be in Singapore,” he added.