Yiannis Galatsanos (Diffraqtion): The Greek founder who swept the Slush 100 and raises millions from the US and Europe

Co-founder Yiannis Galatsanos is now focusing on the European market and is exploring collaborations with Greece in the defense and security sectors.

We have received $1.5 million in funding from DARPA (now the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an organization of the US Department of Defense) and we have received $2.5 million from American venture capitals. Now we have won 1 million euros from VCs General Catalyst and Cherry Ventures in the Slush 100 competition.”

This is the impressive history of the two-year-old deep-tech startup Diffraqtion, as described to newmoney by the company’s co-founder and CEO, Yannis Johannes Galatsanos, a few minutes after its surprising victory in the international innovation competition Slush 100.

In less than two years of its existence, the company Diffraqtion has managed to win funds and support from the most powerful army in the world - the United States - and from the most powerful investment funds in the US.

But for Yannis Johannes Galatsanos, this is just the beginning.

Armed with an extremely advanced dual-use satellite camera technology, developed in collaboration with DARPA and NASA, the next target is Europe.

The first decisive step towards penetrating the European market was taken at the Slush 2025 innovation festival, one of Europe’s largest innovation fairs, held in Helsinki on November 19-20.

The company is a spin-off of MIT, where Galatsanos started graduate studies three years ago .

“We produce a quantum camera, which is our own patent. This camera “sees” 20 times more information than a conventional camera and can calculate/understand what it sees 1,000 times faster than an Nvidia processor. Our cameras are placed on satellites and in a 500-kilometer orbit they “look” at the earth or space. They are used in research and can help in defense and security programs. They can even detect fires from space.”

Diffraqtion was founded in 2024 by three young scientists. Having completed the MIT Sloan Fellows MBA in quantum computing and entrepreneurship (and with previous studies at the universities of Frankfurt and Oxford), Galatsanos joined forces with Dr. Christine Yi-Ting Wang and Professor Saikat Guha and founded the company that develops first-of-its-kind technology at the intersection of space, quantum photonics and optics.

From the stars of the Cretan sky to the top of space technology

Yiannis Johannes Galatsanos is of Greek-German descent (his father is Greek and his mother is German). He was born in Germany, came to Greece (first in Athens and then in Agios Nikolaos, Crete) at the age of 4 and returned to Germany to study. His family remains in Greece and, as he told us, “visits very often.”

“Growing up as a stargazing kid in a rural Greek island town, I never imagined I would win an award for Space Innovation of the Year in the US!” wrote Yiannis two months ago, when Diffraqtion won 1st place in the Space Innovation Challenge at the 2025 US Space Industry & Government Summit & Expo.

Shortly after, triumph at Slush 2025 came. Of the thousands of startups that applied to this year’s Slush 100 competition, the festival’s Committee selected the 100 most interesting. Three more rounds followed, until the final, where Diffraqtion prevailed.

Now Galatsanos is making plans for how technology will help the defense plans of Europe, and Greece in particular.

“The Slush award will help us a lot in our contacts in Europe. It may lead us to collaborations 

“with European countries,” he told us.

Among these countries is, of course, Greece. Diffraqtion’s CEO made the first contacts with the Greek delegation at Slush 2025, organized by Endeavor Greece and consisting of 150 founders, investors, researchers and academics.

“Endeavor helped us get in touch with representatives of the Greek government to examine how we can collaborate in the fields of defense and security,” G. Galatsanos told Greek outlet New Money.

The next contact with the Greek authorities will take place during the visit of the Hellenic Center for Defense Innovation (ELKAK) to the US, in early December.

“Our goal is to see how we could strengthen the company and whether its technology could strengthen Greek systems,” Georgia Prasinou, ELKAK’s communications manager, told newmoney.

Meanwhile, G. Galatsanos has a message for Greek entrepreneurs:

“I would tell Greek entrepreneurs to come to Slush and present their product. It is really a very good opportunity. I hope that there will be programs in Europe similar to those in the US, so that spin-offs can emerge from universities, as happened in our case. In Greece we have very good professors and very good research work is produced