Jérémy Picot-Clémente: What’s your background?

Daniel Kraus: I completed my Master’s degree in pharmaceutical biotechnology at the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences in Jena in 2017. I then pursued a Ph.D. in Microsystems Technology, with a focus on microfluidics, at the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology in Jena. My research on multispectral image-based sorting of biological particles brought me into close contact with Markus Riedi, CEO and owner of OptoGroup. During this time, we jointly developed an automated microscope to classify honey pollen samples. There was a strong technological and entrepreneurial fit between us, and Markus subsequently invited me to join Opto after I completed my Ph.D. At the time, Opto wanted to expand beyond its traditional industrial markets to address applications in biotechnology and life sciences.

I joined Opto in 2022 as product manager for Life Science & Biophotonics and built up this business area within the company. I wanted to become part of the management team and help shape the strategic development of OptoGroup. In January 2025, I was appointed director Global Technology Strategy to coordinate Opto’s hardware and software strategy from a group-wide perspective rather than that of an individual subsidiary. In January 2026, Markus Riedi became chairman of OptoGroup and focused primarily on strategic direction, partnerships, and sales, while I assumed responsibility for OptoGroup’s day-to-day business and operations.

JP-C: How has the company evolved?

DK: Opto was founded in 1980 as a supplier of optomechanical components and accessories for Leica microscopes. During the 1990s, the company expanded beyond its traditional optomechanical portfolio by adding cameras, sensors, and laser integration for original equipment manufacturer (OEM) inspection systems. Since then, we’ve continuously expanded and adapted its portfolio in response to evolving market requirements and gradually developed from a component supplier into an integrated photonics and imaging solutions provider.

Today, we employ 80 people across our international organization. Around 50 employees are based at our headquarters in Munich, where we bring together R&D, marketing, sales, assembly, and mechanical manufacturing. We also operate an R&D site in Jena, while a team of 15 software engineers in Montélimar, France, is responsible for our in-house software development.

At the beginning of 2026, we strengthened our software and AI capabilities by acquiring a software company that specializes in AI development for industrial machine-vision applications. Our international sales organization is supported by sales offices in Singapore and Southern California. This combination of hardware development, optical and mechanical engineering, software, AI, and international sales allows us to address increasingly complex imaging and inspection applications from a single technology platform.

JP-C: Who are your primary customers?

DK: Our primary customers are OEMs that integrate our optical components and subsystems into their own machines and systems. This gives us a broad application footprint—ranging from ophthalmology and semiconductor inspection to hardness testing, life sciences, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical applications. During the past few years, we’ve seen particularly strong momentum in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors, where rapid technological development and the emergence of new applications are creating demand for advanced imaging and optical technologies. This is evident in areas such as medical diagnostics, digital pathology, microfluidics, and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

These markets demonstrated strong growth during recent years and, in our view, will continue to offer substantial growth in the future. We’re a technology and OEM partner and support customers not only with individual components but also with complete optical and imaging subsystems. We work closely with OEMs from the early development stage to series production to enable the integration of our technologies into both new and existing production and analytical systems. It allows us to respond quickly to emerging requirements and to help our customers bring innovative systems to market.

JP-C: What are your main challenges?

DK: One of the biggest challenges is positioning Opto both technologically and organizationally for the future while building on more than 45 years’ market experience. We’re a long-term-oriented, privately owned company with no external investors, and have grown organically. It gives us a strong foundation, including a highly experienced workforce with deep expertise in the assembly and alignment of optical components and systems, particularly where precision and reproducibility are critical. At the same time, we need to become younger, more digital, and more agile as an organization. The key challenge is to find the right balance between our accumulated experience and the adoption of new technologies, manufacturing methods, and digital processes. This transformation can only succeed if we take our employees with us, give them the opportunity to contribute, and make them active participants in the process.

During recent years, we’ve deliberately strengthened the organization with young, highly motivated, and digitally skilled colleagues who bring new perspectives and expertise. But digital transformation isn’t the responsibility of individual employees or departments—it requires the entire organization to move in the same direction. My role is to create this alignment, balance continuity with change, and ultimately turn our strategic vision into tangible results.

JP-C: Can you explain why you’re focusing on implementing AI for microscopy?

DK: Our vision at Opto is to automate microscopy and transform traditionally manual workflows into fully digital, data-driven processes. In applications such as cancer diagnostics and pathology, large sample areas often need to be scanned comprehensively—in both the XY plane and the I-axis, generating enormous amounts of data that must be acquired, analyzed, and stored efficiently.

Our goal is to make these systems as autonomous as possible, with automated scanning and intelligent pre-evaluation of the data. AI can identify relevant structures and anomalies within a sample and highlight them for physicians, without making a diagnosis itself. This significantly reduces the time required to review large datasets and allows medical experts to focus on areas that require their attention. Automated workflows also make the systems easier to operate and generate highly reproducible, digitally documented results. This approach is not only a major opportunity for life science and medical applications but also for semiconductor inspection, electronics, and metrology. Ultimately, AI enables us to move from simply acquiring images to extracting meaningful information from complex datasets.

JP-C: How do you envision the company’s future?

DK: Opto is well positioned, with a broad application base and we have a key advantage over larger competitors in terms of speed and flexibility. As a smaller technology company, we can move from customer requirements to a functional prototype in as little as three weeks. At the same time, we believe microscopy—particularly for medical diagnostics—is undergoing a fundamental transformation, with spatial information increasingly complementing spectral data to provide a more comprehensive view of a sample.

One of the biggest barriers to wider adoption today is the high cost and complexity of advanced microscopy systems, which can easily reach several hundred thousand dollars and require highly trained operators. We have a significant opportunity to close this gap with fully automated, easy-to-use systems: Load the sample, press a button, and receive a result within minutes. Our vision is to develop systems that can be deployed directly in clinics, laboratories, and industrial environments at a fraction of today’s cost, while providing standardized, reproducible, and fully documented data.