Montréal’s One Silicon Chip Photonics (OSCP) has closed $6 million USD ($8.6 million CAD) in Series A funding to accelerate the development of its post-GPS sensor technology.
OSCP develops photonic gyroscopes and inertial measurement units (IMUs) to help corporate and government customers’ autonomous vehicles and robots find their way. The technology is intended for moments when Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are jammed, degraded, or unavailable, from conflict zones to cornfields and urban canyons.
“We help people navigate when there’s no GPS, or when GPS is funky,” OSCP COO Alex Lintott told BetaKit in an interview.
“We help people navigate when there’s no GPS, or when GPS is funky.”
Alex Lintott, OSCP
The startup’s all-equity, all-primary capital Series A round closed in August. It was led by New Science Ventures with support from fellow new American investor Emerging Ventures and existing United Kingdom-based backer 2050 Capital. OSCP plans to use this capital to commercialize its existing products and fuel the development of its next-generation offerings.
OSCP was founded in 2015 by CEO Kazem Zandi, who holds a PhD in engineering physics from Polytechnique Montréal, has 15 patents in advanced microsystems and integrated photonics, and previously worked as a senior optoelectronics devices engineer with Defence R&D Canada and a senior process engineer with Québec’s C2MI.
According to the COO, there are two main types of IMUs: micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMs—which are cheap, small, lightweight, and “not super accurate”—and fibre-optic gyroscopes, or FOGs, which are far more precise, but also much larger, heavier, and expensive.
“We want to take a [FOG] and shrink that down onto a chip,” Lintott said, a concept the company aims to fully integrate within the next two to three years. “That’ll be a game-changer for us and the industry.”
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Lintott said OSCP has already made significant progress on this front. He claimed the company’s chip-based hardware units are about the size of a matchbox or small apple, and are already hitting accuracies that few other players on the market can at a lower price.
The market pull that OSCP saw in 2024 and 2025 led it to raise this round. Lintott, who is also a partner at OSCP’s investor, 2050, joined OSCP last year to help with growth.
The COO, who is an American based in Austin, Texas, said that being a Canadian company is an advantage right now when selling abroad, given the country’s lack of export controls on this sort of tech compared to the United States, and its perception as a more stable partner. While OSCP would love to sell into the US, its current focus is on meeting demand from Canadian and European clients.
“We’re going to be the preeminent IMU provider out of Canada, and we’re going to do it through disruptive technology,” Lintott said.
With eight open roles at the moment, OSCP plans to grow its 18-person team to 30 employees within the next 12 months to support those ambitions.
Feature image courtesy OSCP.