Entrepreneurs: Bright hope M Squared shining a light on the next technology revolution

Goldfinger’s deadly laser in James Bond isn’t a patch on the beams of light created by Dr Graeme Malcolm’s tech company M Squared Lasers.

The 50-year-old scientist, who co-founded the business in 2006, makes high-tech industrial-strength lasers used to control things as tiny as atoms.

These high-tech instruments, costing anywhere between £25,000 and £1 million, are the picks and shovels of the modern-day tech industry, used by firms to make tiny computer parts, or by Nobel-winning scientists in complex lab experiments.

“We make the world’s purest light. People often think a laser is very pure, but if you take a standard laser, our lasers are a million to a billion times purer. That’s opening up a whole new range of applications.”

Mostly they’re used in producing silicon chips to power mobile phones and laptops, creating the “stencils” used to make the tiny circuit pattern designs.

But the lasers — which pump out powerful pulses of light — are also so powerful they can detect molecules in the air which can’t be seen by the human eye, paving the way for more creative uses of the technology.

Whisky maker William Grant & Son, for example, uses them to detect ethanol seeping out of the whisky barrels which may ruin the quality of their booze and the European Space Agency has used them on the Sentinel-5P observation satellite to track pollution and climate change from space.

The company, which is working with Imperial College and has the backing of start-up funder BGF, exports to about 30 countries. Around 60% of its sales come from the US where it has two offices — one near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the other in Palo Alto, deep in the the heart of Silicon Valley.

Sales are set to reach nearly £20 million this year and the business has more than 100 staff, making it something of a rising star in the UK tech scene.

But like most entrepreneurs, Malcolm has come through some rocky patches.

“We kind of specialise in hard moments,” he says, referring to his unfortunate timing. His first venture, another laser firm Microlase Optical Systems, was founded the week after Black Wednesday in 1992 when the interest rate on its loans rocketed to 18%.