Laser startup LITILIT Brings Femtosecond Lasers to Industrial Scale With New Vilnius Factory

Nikolajus Gavrillinas, co-founder and CEO of LITILIT. (Source: LITILIT) 

LITILIT is developing one of the highest-capacity femtosecond laser production facilities in the world, designed to reach an annual production capacity of up to 3,000 lasers within a few years of launch. The company aims to address one of the key barriers to wider femtosecond laser adoption: the need for scalable, industrially practical production.

June 17, Vilnius, Lithuania: Femtosecond laser startup LITILIT has begun developing a new large-scale femtosecond laser production facility in Vilnius, with a project value of approximately six million euros. The company plans to complete the main construction and fit-out works by the end of this year and reach annual production capacity of up to 3,000 lasers within approximately a few years of launch.

Femtosecond lasers are among the most advanced tools for high-precision material processing. Their extremely short light pulses enable highly accurate processing with minimal thermal impact and makes them suitable for a wide range of applications – from semiconductor and advanced electronics manufacturing to medical procedures such as eye surgery.

According to Nikolajus Gavrilinas, co-founder and CEO of LITILIT, one of the biggest barriers to mass femtosecond laser adoption today is that there are no ways to manufacture lasers at the scale that industry will require.

“Traditionally, femtosecond laser architectures evolved from scientific systems. They can deliver strong performance, but are often complex to assemble, difficult to automate and dependent on highly qualified specialists. Our lasers are based on a purpose-built architecture with lower component complexity, modular design and a high level of automation. This allows us to organize assembly, testing and quality control faster and more efficiently,” Gavrilinas explains.

The factory will be located in Vilnius with a business area covering 4,000 square meters. It will include two main production areas: a modern CNC metal machining shop and robotic femtosecond laser assembly and testing workshops.

The main construction and fit-out works are planned for completion in the final quarter of 2026. During its first year of operations, the factory is expected to produce up to 1,000 femtosecond lasers, with capacity set to increase to 3,000 lasers annually within the following few years. The total value of the project is expected to reach around six million euros.

Patented technology

Gavrilinas explains that the technological foundation behind LITILIT’s approach to scalable production traces back to a 2014 discovery – a fundamentally new and patented method of generating ultrashort pulses. The company has been developing the technology since it was founded in 2015 and in 2022, it raised €3.7 million from Taiwania Capital and Iron Wolf Capital to support further technology development, becoming the first company to receive investment from Taiwan’s USD 200 million CEE fund.

Based on the invention, made by LITILIT co-founder Kęstutis Regelskis at the Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (FTMC) in Vilnius, Lithuania, the company developed a patented laser architecture that enables more efficient, compact and industrially scalable femtosecond laser systems.

“Our architecture achieves around 20% electrical-to-optical femtosecond efficiency, which is a strong result for this industry. In practical terms, this means lower energy consumption, reduced cooling requirements and reliable operation in industrial environments. The same architecture also allows us to build compact and robust lasers that require no maintenance and are robust to external disturbances,” Gavrilinas says.

The Vilnius factory is designed as the first step in a broader international expansion. LITILIT plans to replicate the model in other regions together with international partners.

“Femtosecond lasers are becoming an essential tool for next-generation manufacturing, but wider adoption will depend on making the technology more accessible. With this factory, we are taking the first step toward a repeatable global production model – and we are proud to begin that journey in Lithuania, a country with a strong tradition in laser science and engineering,” Gavrilinas concludes.

Cinchy Appoints Cybersecurity Industry Veteran J.Paul Haynes as Chief Executive Officer

 Former eSentire Executive Joins Cinchy to Accelerate the Company’s Next Chapter of Trusted AI Adoption

TORONTO, ON — June 17: Cinchy today announced the appointment of J.Paul Haynes as Chief Executive Officer, bringing decades of cybersecurity leadership experience to the company as organizations increasingly seek trusted approaches to AI adoption.

Haynes joins Cinchy following a distinguished career helping build and scale some of cybersecurity’s most recognized organizations, including playing a leadership role in the growth of eSentire from an emerging startup into one of the industry’s leading Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers.

His appointment comes at a pivotal moment as enterprises struggle to safely move beyond AI experimentation and begin integrating generative AI, copilots and autonomous agents into critical business workflows.

While AI promises significant gains in productivity and acts to unlock  innovation, many organizations are discovering that existing governance and security models were not designed for systems capable of independently accessing data, interacting with enterprise applications and influencing business decisions increasingly in autonomous fashions.

Under Haynes’ leadership, Cinchy will focus on helping organizations accelerate AI adoption while maintaining the governance, security and operational oversight required to do so responsibly.

“Organizations are under tremendous pressure to move faster with AI, but they are learning they cannot sacrifice trust, security or accountability in the process,” said Haynes. “The opportunity in front of us is to help enterprises confidently embrace AI while ensuring it operates within the guardrails of their business, compliance obligations and security requirements. I believe Cinchy is uniquely positioned to solve that challenge.”

Founded on a vision of helping organizations govern access to enterprise data, Cinchy has spent years helping customers establish trusted access, visibility and control across complex environments. Today, the company is extending that governance foundation to address a new challenge: enabling trusted AI adoption at enterprise scale.

“J.Paul’s experience helping organizations navigate transformational shifts in cybersecurity makes him an ideal leader for Cinchy’s next chapter,” said Leo Casusol, Managing Director at Forgepoint, a leading U.S. cybersecurity investment firm and Cinchy investor. “His track record of scaling innovative companies, building high-performing teams and understanding the evolving security landscape will be invaluable as enterprises seek new ways to govern and secure AI.”

The appointment reflects Cinchy’s belief that trusted AI adoption is becoming the defining technology challenge of this decade.

As AI continues to take on a more active role across business workflows, Cinchy remains focused on building the governance foundation organizations need to safely scale AI adoption across enterprise systems, data and processes, while maintaining visibility, accountability and trust.

Nickel Digital Redefines The Pod Shop For The Digital Asset Age

June 17: Nickel Digital Asset Management (“Nickel”), Europe’s leading digital assets hedge fund manager, founded by alumni of Bankers Trust, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, has outlined its vision of best practice for pod shops in the digital asset space.

 Its model is focused on reducing fixed-cost drag and strengthening alignment and trust with pods anchored in higher performance fees, but with a holdback to absorb some degree of potential future drawdowns. This First Loss Deferred (FLD) capital creates a tangible alignment of incentives and avoids the asymmetric manager payout structure.

 Many of the managers come out of top-tier trading environments, ranging from established TradFi hedge funds and proprietary trading firms, to highly specialised crypto-native desks, combined with strong academic pedigrees in disciplines such as mathematics, physics, engineering and computer science. The blend of rigorous analytical training and real-world trading experience is fundamental to Nickel’s systematic, research-driven approach.

 Traditional pod shop models have often been criticised for fixed-cost drag – the burden of high management fees and sign-on bonuses that dilute returns. Nickel’s model deliberately strips away these elements, replacing them with a system built on institutional-grade rigour and genuine performance-led growth.

 In a fragmented and volatile digital asset market, Nickel believes that the hero trader model is no longer sufficient. To capture alpha across global venues, the firm exclusively funds fully systematic strategies where every stage from signal generation to execution is driven by code.

 A cornerstone of Nickel’s best practice approach is its commitment to manager autonomy and intellectual property (IP) protection. Unlike many platforms that seek to internalise signals or harvest successful strategies, Nickel’s pods remain independent by design.

 Nickel’s operational excellence is underpinned by RiskZeus, its proprietary system capturing over 100 million tick-by-tick data points every 24 hours across roughly 10,000 open positions. This technology was proven during the October 10th Flash Crash last year which saw the largest liquidation event in digital asset history, with $20 billion wiped out. While many faced collapse, Nickel’s fund protected capital and delivered one of its strongest daily returns, maintaining annualised volatility below 7%.

 Counterparty and custody risk management remain central to the platform with 94% of exposure managed via Off-Exchange Settlement (OES) solutions as of February 2026. This ensures investor assets remain secure with specialised crypto custodians like Copper and regulated banks like Sygnum acting as the custody providers.

 As of early 2026, Nickel’s trading bench includes 80 pods across 35 cities and six continents, with aggregate trading volumes exceeding $100 billion in 2025.

 Anatoly Crachilov, CEO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, explains that the platform’s success is rooted in its ability to act as a bridge between exceptional global talent and institutional capital.  “The next generation of multi-manager investing in digital assets will not be built around in-house star traders and balance-sheet-heavy platforms.” says Crachilov. “It will be built around institutional access to globally-located scarce systematic trading talent, protected intellectual property, and a powerful risk control infrastructure running on 24/7 basis.

Alek Kloda, Co-CIO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, believes that the shift toward tokenisation demands a new level of technological agility. “As digital assets mature, the velocity of market opportunities requires a 24/7, code-driven approach to both execution and risk management,” notes Kloda. “Our model empowers independent pods to act swiftly while ensuring that global risk controls are uniformly applied, bridging the gap between low-latency crypto trading and institutional safety,” he commented.

 Michael Hall, Co-CIO and Founding Partner at Nickel Digital, notes that the strength of Nickel Digital’s platform lies in its marriage of flexibility for the trader and discipline for the investor. “By ensuring our trading partners retain ownership of their IP, we attract the best talent, while our centralized risk architecture ensures that this creative freedom operates within strict, pre-defined parameters. This balance is crucial for achieving high Sharpe ratio strategies in a volatile market environment,” he adds.

 “We are defining the next generation of asset management, where institutional rigour meets digital agility,” concludes Crachilov. “Our commitment is to continue providing superior risk-adjusted returns for our investors, regardless of market direction.”

AMD and Rackspace Technology Sign Definitive Agreement for Phased Deployment of 30 MW of AMD AI Compute

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and SAN ANTONIO, June 17:  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) and Rackspace Technology® (NASDAQ: RXT), a global enterprise AI infrastructure and solutions provider, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement for the phased deployment of an initial 30 MW footprint dedicated to AMD-based compute deployments across Rackspace’s global data centers beginning in late 2026 through 2028. The agreement operationalizes the Memorandum of Understanding announced May 7, 2026, and establishes AMD as a strategic technology partner at the silicon layer of Rackspace’s governed AI stack.

At full deployment, 30 MW of dedicated AMD compute across Rackspace’s footprint will represent meaningful capacity to serve regulated enterprise workloads, including healthcare providers who have expressed early interest in accelerated compute for clinical AI and inference at scale. This collaboration incorporates both AMD Instinct™ GPUs (including MI355X, MI350P, and future successor solutions) and AMD EPYC™ CPUs inside an integrated Enterprise AI Cloud architecture, enabling Rackspace to route each workload to the right compute with full accountability for performance and outcomes end to end.

“Enterprises in regulated industries need AI infrastructure that is governed from the ground up, with one operator accountable for business outcomes, not a collection of vendors each owning a piece,” said Gajen Kandiah, CEO, Rackspace Technology. “This collaboration combines the right compute with the right operating model and delivers something the market hasn’t offered before: a governed AI stack with one accountable partner from silicon to outcomes.”

“As enterprise AI evolves, customers need infrastructure that can deliver the right mix of accelerated and general-purpose compute for each workload,” said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Compute and Enterprise AI, AMD. “By bringing together leadership AMD AI compute solutions and Rackspace’s governed cloud operating model, we are helping regulated enterprises deploy high-performance AI infrastructure with the openness, scalability and accountability needed to run AI at enterprise scale.”

Both companies expect to dedicate sales and marketing resources to identify and engage enterprise customers for AMD compute-powered infrastructure, with each company committing personnel to jointly develop and pursue customer opportunities across regulated industries.

This agreement will accelerate delivery of the four integrated capabilities announced with the MOU: Enterprise AI Cloud, Enterprise Inference Engine, Inference as a Service, and Bare Metal AMD Instinct, offering a complete, governed stack from bare metal compute through fully operated inference. Together, the companies aim to establish a new category of managed enterprise AI infrastructure that offers enterprises an alternative to the bare metal model. The shift from AI experiments to agentic workflows running inside core enterprise systems is accelerating demand for exactly the kind of governed, accountable infrastructure this collaboration is built to deliver.