April 2, 2026
Nanometer Lighting Acquired, Joins Cooledge and Velaria
Ted Pearlman, New York lighting entrepreneur, executes another strategic exit
Aither Global Holdings has acquired New York–based Nanometer Lighting, adding a tightly focused architectural brand to a deliberately small portfolio that includes Cooledge Lighting and Velaria Systems. That’s the entire roster. Not a sprawling roll-up, but a three-company system built around how light functions within architecture.
At the center is Bill Sims, CEO of Aither, longtime leader of Cooledge and before that CEO of Color Kinetics. His track record leans less toward financial engineering and more toward shaping how lighting integrates into the built environment. That context matters here.
Where Craft Meets Scale
Cooledge is best understood as a surface company that happens to use light. It turns ceilings and walls into luminous planes, shifting the conversation away from fixtures and toward spatial experience. Velaria works alongside that idea, combining finishes, acoustics, and lighting into packaged systems and membrane ceilings.
Nanometer approaches the problem from the opposite direction. Its work is granular. Microlinear products, modular platforms, and controls that allow designers to tune light with precision. It is less about filling a space with light and more about controlling how that light behaves at the edges.
Together, the structure becomes more practical than aspirational. One defines the luminous field. Another integrates it into the building system. Nanometer refines the delivery.
Aither’s language around “immersive environments” risks sounding inflated, but the underlying shift is real. At the top end of the market, architects and brands are increasingly unwilling to coordinate multiple vendors for lighting, ceilings, and acoustics. Integration is no longer a convenience. It is becoming an expectation.
The Ted Pearlman Thread
Nanometer’s roots are distinctly New York, and so is its leadership. Ted Pearlman has spent decades operating in specialized corners of the market, from emergency lighting to agency work. He founded Encore Lighting to serve the city’s unique emergency requirements, alongside the Encore Sales Agency in Maspeth, Queens, which later merged with ELA.
Nanometer reflects that same mindset. Focused, technical, and responsive to the demands of a specification-driven market that doesn’t tolerate generalists.
Now it sits inside a structure that could extend its reach without erasing that identity. That balance will be the real test.
For Lighting People, this is not a scale play. It is a systems play, built one carefully chosen company at a time.
