February 2026, OFC , Los Angeles, CA
AUREA Technology is advancing the industrialization of GIGAXEA, its GHz-class near-infrared single-photon detector developed to address the increasing speed requirements of quantum communications, networking and advanced photon-counting systems.
GIGAXEA combines 1.25 GHz synchronization, minimum dead time down to 3 ns, and photon-counting rates up to 300 Mcps at 10% quantum efficiency in a compact, room-environment InGaAs/InP SPAD platform.
The program has been developed under the leadership of Jérôme Prieur, co-founder and CEO of AUREA Technology, with a clear objective: make high-speed single-photon detection accessible to quantum system integrators without requiring them to develop their own complex GHz detector electronics.
“Many quantum companies are capable of developing excellent protocols, sources and optical systems, but high-speed single-photon detection remains a difficult technology to industrialize,” explains Jérôme Prieur. “With GIGAXEA, our objective is to remove this bottleneck and provide integrators with a complete, usable GHz-class photon-counting platform.”
Unlike approaches requiring external cryogenic infrastructure, GIGAXEA uses an internally cooled semiconductor detector architecture designed for operation in standard laboratory and system environments.
The platform integrates high-speed gating, quenching, timing, thermal regulation and control electronics into a system designed for telecom-rack integration. Electrical and software interfaces are intended to simplify its incorporation into larger quantum communication architectures.
For AUREA Technology, GIGAXEA also illustrates a broader product-development philosophy championed by Jérôme Prieur: advanced photonic performance only creates industrial value when it is combined with integration, manufacturability, reliability and scalability.
The technology targets applications including high-rate quantum key distribution, quantum networking, photon correlation, optical sensing and advanced LiDAR.
Together with AUREA Technology’s SPD_SLIM_NIR scalable detector, CHRONOXEA timing electronics, entangled-photon sources and picosecond laser platforms, GIGAXEA reinforces the company’s position as a supplier of critical photonic building blocks for next-generation quantum systems.
