Forbes Greece - Slush 2025: The Greek startup founder who won the “Slush 100” competition and $1 million
Translated from Forbes Greece: https://www.forbesgreece.gr/forbes-elliniki-ekdosi/3958312
Mission to Helsinki – Eleftheria Piperopoulou
Diffraqtion, founded by Greek entrepreneur Johannes–Giannis Galatsanos, was the big winner of this year’s Slush 100 competition at Slush 2025 in Helsinki, Finland—one of the world’s most important innovation festivals.
Out of more than 1,000 applications, Diffraqtion advanced successively to the Top 50, Top 20, and finally the three finalists, ultimately taking first place and securing a €1 million investment in exchange for equity from General Catalyst and Cherry Ventures.
Speaking to Capital.gr and Forbes Greece, the Greek startup founder talked about his journey, Diffraqtion’s technology, and the contacts he has already begun with Greece for applications in the defense sector.
Diffraqtion is a spin-off from MIT and is based on a quantum camera technology capable of “seeing” up to 20 times more information than a conventional camera, while processing data up to 1,000 times faster than a typical processor. The company had previously raised $1.5 million from DARPA (the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and $2.5 million from U.S. venture capital funds.
The technology
Image capture with conventional cameras results in the loss of 95% of photon information. Today’s satellites and imaging systems suffer from low resolution, constrained by a fundamental physical limit: the diffraction limit.
Diffraqtion’s technology leverages quantum innovations developed for NASA, aimed at discovering life on other planets. Its cameras are the first to surpass this limit and can “see” 20 times farther than any known camera in human history.
The technology was developed in collaboration with DARPA and NASA for high-precision applications in space situational awareness, such as tracking objects in space.
As explained by Giannis Galatsanos, Co-Founder and CEO of Diffraqtion, this patented technology is installed on low Earth orbit satellites, approximately 500 kilometers above Earth. The goal is to contribute to fields such as defense, security, and even wildfire detection from space.
The startup was founded in late 2024 by Mr. Galatsanos, his professor at the University of Maryland and MIT, Saikat Guha, and Christine Wang, who holds a PhD from Harvard and has many years of industry experience. The company is headquartered in Boston.
From Germany and Crete to Boston
Giannis Galatsanos is a graduate of MIT and Oxford University in the fields of artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and entrepreneurship. He has more than 15 years of experience developing advanced AI technologies and has served as Executive Director at Novartis.
Speaking about his personal journey, he noted that he was born in Germany but raised in Greece, initially in Athens and later in Agios Nikolaos, Crete. He graduated from a Greek school, sat the national university entrance exams, and in 2006 returned to Germany to continue his studies. His mother is German, his father Greek, and his family lives permanently in Crete, which he visits frequently. In recent years, he has been based in Boston.
Contacts with the Greek government
Despite Diffraqtion’s limited presence in Greece so far, new contacts have begun with the Greek government through Endeavor Greece, at an exploratory level for potential collaborations.
Referring to the importance of the Slush win, Mr. Galatsanos emphasized that he believes it will open significant doors for partnerships, particularly in Europe and with European governments.
Sending a message to Greek entrepreneurs, he encouraged them to actively participate in events like Slush and international pitching competitions. At the same time, he stressed the need for Greece to create programs similar to those in the U.S. that facilitate technology transfer from universities to the market.