Lyte AI
Robotics perception platform with silicon-level fusion
Senior Optical Engineer
+ Equity
About the job
- A Master's or Ph.D. in Optical Engineering, Photonics, Physics, or a related field with 3–5+ years of relevant experience, or a bachelor's degree with 7+ years of relevant optical engineering experience.
- Hands-on experience in lens or optical system design.
- Proficiency with Zemax OpticStudio, CODE V, or equivalent optical design and simulation software.
- Strong fundamentals in geometrical and physical optics, imaging systems, aberration theory, and optical system engineering.
- Experience defining optical requirements and specifications from system-level performance requirements.
- Experience with optical tolerancing, sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo analysis, and correlation between simulation and measured hardware performance.
- Hands-on experience with optical testing, characterization, system bring-up, debugging, and validation.
- Experience with lens manufacturing processes, optical materials, coatings, mechanical interfaces, and design-for-manufacturing considerations.
- Experience supporting optical designs through qualification and manufacturing introduction.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and cross-functional communication skills.
- Own optical design activities for lenses, windows, mirrors, and other optical components, including engineering requirements, specification definition, and requirements flow-down from system-level performance targets.
- Develop and optimize optical designs using Zemax OpticStudio, CODE V, or equivalent tools, including optimization, tolerancing, sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo analysis, performance modeling, and manufacturability assessment.
- Lead optical design execution across internal engineering teams, external design consultants, suppliers, and manufacturing partners.
- Review and approve optical design deliverables, including prescriptions, tolerance analyses, Monte Carlo results, drawings, and supplier documentation.
- Define specifications, acceptance criteria, and validation methods for optical components and assemblies.
- Partner with optical suppliers and manufacturing teams to resolve design, fabrication, assembly, and performance issues.
- Own optical designs from concept and prototype through qualification, new product introduction, and production support, including yield improvement, cost reduction, and sustaining engineering.
- Plan and execute hands-on optical testing and characterization, including modulation transfer function, wavefront error, distortion, relative illumination, boresight, and stray-light measurements.
- Correlate measured optical performance with simulation models, design assumptions, and specifications.
- Lead future-generation optical design efforts, including architecture studies, trade-off analyses, technology evaluations, and next-generation optical solutions.
- Collaborate with mechanical, electrical, firmware, digital signal processing, software, manufacturing, quality, and supplier teams to ensure optical designs meet system-level requirements.
- Lead optical design reviews and clearly communicate technical decisions, trade-offs, risks, and recommendations.
- Develop practical solutions that balance optical performance, manufacturability, cost, schedule, and product requirements.
- Develop analysis and automation workflows in Python or equivalent tools to support design, tolerancing, test correlation, and data analysis.
- Analyze optical performance data and drive root-cause investigation of issues such as aberrations, alignment sensitivity, stray light, ghosting, tolerance stack-up, and manufacturing variation.
- Experience leading or technically managing optical design work performed by external consultants, optical suppliers, or manufacturing partners.
- Experience supporting optical products through production, including yield improvement, cost reduction, and sustaining engineering.
- Experience developing next-generation lens concepts, optical architectures, or system-level trade studies.
- Experience with optical component and system measurements including modulation transfer function, wavefront error, distortion, relative illumination, boresight, and stray light.
- Experience using Python or similar tools for optical analysis, test automation, and data analysis.
- Experience working across multidisciplinary teams spanning optics, mechanical, electrical, firmware, digital signal processing, software, manufacturing, and quality.
About the company
Lyte AI builds an end-to-end perception stack for robots, from custom sensing silicon to software. Its LyteVision platform combines camera data, inertial measurements, and a 4D distance-velocity sensor into a single synchronized data stream at the silicon level. This reduces latency and calibration drift that can occur when stitching together separate sensors. The system is designed for industrial uses such as inspection, logistics, and manufacturing robots, and also aims to power broader Physical AI platforms. The company differentiates itself through its fully integrated, silicon-level sensor fusion and a pedigree of engineers who helped create depth sensing for devices like Face ID and Kinect, backed by substantial funding to scale silicon production and deployments. Its goal is to provide reliable, low-latency robot perception to enable scalable automation across industrial settings.
Company Size
51-200
Company Stage
Series C
Total Funding
$272M
Headquarters
Mountain View, California
Founded
2021
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- 2026-09-02: Lyte raised $165 million at $1.6 billion, validating investor demand.
- 2026-09-22: NVIDIA Halos and Holoscan partnerships expand Lyte into safety-critical robotics.
- Lyte says it is shipping to inspection, logistics, and manufacturing customers since 2026-01.
What critics are saying
- Rhoda AI, RealSense, and Luxonis commoditize perception with cheaper, modular stacks by 2027.
- Custom silicon production ties Lyte's revenue to fab yields, packaging, and supply-chain execution.
- A failed LyteVision deployment in warehouses would expose calibration promises and stall enterprise adoption.
What makes Lyte AI unique
- 2026-09-22: Lyte owns sensing silicon, multimodal sensors, and perception software end-to-end.
- 2026-09-12: NVIDIA collaboration streams LyteVision data into Holoscan for zero-copy, low-latency twins.
- Founders Shpunt, Hajati, and Gerson built PrimeSense and Apple Face ID depth sensing.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
401(k) Retirement Plan
Company Equity
Paid Vacation
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↓ -2%1 year growth
↓ -2%2 year growth
↓ -2%Lyte, founded by Apple's Face ID engineers, raises $165M at $1.6B to build robot perception. September 3, 2026 * Lyte, founded by the engineers behind Apple's Face ID and Microsoft Kinect, has raised $165M in Series C funding led by Maverick Silicon at a $1.6B post-money valuation. * The round more than triples Lyte's valuation from January 2026, when it left stealth with $107M and a "visual brain" pitch for robots. * Total funding now stands at $272M as Lyte moves from prototypes into production deployments with inspection, logistics, and manufacturing customers. Robots keep getting smarter models. What they still mostly lack is a trustworthy way to see. That's the vision behind Lyte's $165 million Series C, which lands eight months after the company left stealth and instantly triples its valuation to $1.6 billion. A rematch for the Face ID team. Lyte was founded in Mountain View, California, in 2021 by Alexander Shpunt, Arman Hajati, and Yuval Gerson, three former Apple engineers who worked on the depth-sensing technology behind Face ID. Shpunt previously co-founded PrimeSense, the Israeli 3D-sensing company whose tech powered Microsoft Kinect before Apple bought it in 2013. It's an unusual reunion in more ways than one: Shpunt and Gerson are Israeli, while Hajati trained at the University of Tehran before building his career at Apple. The company emerged from stealth in January with $107 million already raised and LyteVision, its perception platform, in hand. LyteVision fuses a camera, inertial motion sensing, and a 4D sensor that measures distance and velocity into one synchronized data stream, rather than leaving robot-makers to stitch those signals together themselves. For example, a warehouse robot using off-the-shelf components typically loses time and accuracy reconciling mismatched sensor feeds; Lyte's pitch is that its silicon and software measure motion natively, so the fusion problem never shows up downstream. The money and the people behind it. Maverick Silicon led the round; managing partner Andrew Homan has joined Lyte's board. The fund has previously backed SiMa.ai and TensorWave. Existing investor Fidelity Management & Research, which led Lyte's Series B, returned alongside Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, and Ora Global. "Physical AI has a sensing problem before it has a model problem. A robot cannot act safely on data that does not faithfully describe the world. We build the entire perception foundation, from custom silicon to the spatial data our systems produce. This financing will put LyteVision(TM) into more robots, across more environments, faster," Shpunt said. "Lyte is building a foundational sensing platform that enables a wide range of robots to perceive and understand the world around them. The breadth and diversity of early customer demand strengthen our conviction that Lyte is poised to become one of the defining technology companies of the robotics era," added Andrew Homan, managing partner at Maverick Silicon, who has joined Lyte's board of directors. Building the perception layer. Lyte isn't alone in chasing the perception layer of physical AI. Rhoda AI raised $450 million at a $1.7 billion valuation in March, betting on video-trained foundation models rather than owned silicon. RealSense, spun out of Intel with $50 million, is chasing the same camera-and-depth-sensor market from a different angle. Luxonis, further down the funding stack with a $14 million Series A in July, sells an open-source alternative built around its OAK cameras. Where those companies license models or sell modular hardware, Lyte's wager is that owning the full stack, from custom silicon up, is what actually kills the latency and calibration problems robotics teams complain about. "Owning the silicon separates companies that define a category from those that participate in one. Lyte controls every layer of how a robot understands the world and is now taking that breakthrough engineering into production," noted Avigdor Willenz, Lyte's chairman. The AI robotics market is projected to reach $125 billion by 2030. Lyte will use the new capital to scale silicon production, expand LyteVision deployments, and grow headcount across silicon, software, optics, and manufacturing. Whether vertical integration beats the video-trained, license-everything approach Rhoda AI envisions won't be settled by a funding round. It'll be settled by whichever bet ships fewer miscalibrated robots.
Lyte raised $165 million at a $1.6 billion valuation to scale its AI-powered robotics perception platform.
Former Apple engineers' physical AI startup Lyte raises $165M at $1.6B valuation. September 2, 2026 Lyte, a physical AI startup building sensing and perception technology for robots, has raised $165 million in Series C funding at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation. The financing, led by Maverick Silicon, brings Lyte's total raised to $272 million. Fidelity Management And Research Co., which led Lyte's Series B, also participated in the Series C, along with Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, Ora Global (formerly Exor Ventures), and additional existing and new investors. The Sunnyvale, California-based company was founded in 2021 by Alexander Shpunt, Arman Hajati and Yuval Gerson - a trio of former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone giant's advanced sensing and perception technologies. Shpunt had also previously co-founded PrimeSense, a startup whose 3D-sensing technology powered Microsoft Kinect before Apple acquired the company in 2013. The trio's past work helped bring 3D perception to the mainstream and later became a foundation for Apple's Face ID technology. Lyte is building custom silicon, 4D sensing, RGB, motion awareness and AI software to help robots sense where they are and what is moving around them. Initially, its customers are primarily in the warehousing and manufacturing industries. The startup operated in stealth until earlier this year when it emerged and announced it had raised $107 million in Series A and B funding. 'A new kind of perception' "Physical AI will create entirely new categories of robots, and every one of them will need to understand the world around it," CEO Shpunt told Crunchbase News via email. "That requires a new kind of perception: precise, real-time understanding of geometry and motion that machines can trust enough to act on. We built Lyte to become the perception foundation for that future." Funding in the physical AI space has exploded in recent years. In the first half of 2026, global venture funding in the space totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals, per Crunchbase data. That's up dramatically - almost 4x - compared to the second half of 2025 when physical AI startups raised $12 billion across 470 deals. It's also up significantly - by nearly 80% - from the $26.4 billion raised across 436 deals in the first half of 2025. Andrew Homan, managing partner at Maverick Silicon, joined Lyte's board of directors as part of the funding round. "Lyte is building a foundational sensing platform that enables a wide range of robots to perceive and understand the world around them," he said in a release. "The breadth and diversity of early customer demand strengthen our conviction that Lyte is poised to become one of the defining technology companies of the robotics era." Related Crunchbase query:
Lyte, a robotics and AI startup founded by former Apple Face ID engineers, has raised approximately $165 million in new funding, valuing the company at $1.6 billion. This represents more than triple its previous valuation. Maverick Silicon led the funding round, announced on Wednesday, with participation from existing investors including Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Key1 Capital and Ora Global. Fidelity had led the company's previous Series B round. Since its founding in 2021, Lyte has raised a total of $272 million. The startup develops technology to enhance robots' visual capabilities.
Startup from ex-apple Face ID engineers valued at $1.6 billion. Sept. 2, 2026, 2:30 AM PDT Lyte, a fast-growing robotics and artificial intelligence startup from top members of Apple Inc.'s Face ID team, has secured about $165 million in a new funding round that more than triples the company's valuation to $1.6 billion. The latest financing was led by Maverick Silicon, according to a statement on Wednesday, with participation from existing investors, including Fidelity Management & Research - which led the previous Series B round - and Atreides Management, Key1 Capital and Ora Global. The startup has raised a total of $272 million since its 2021 founding. The company, which develops technology to help robots see better and... Bloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis.