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Precision Optics Corporation, Inc.
Precision Optics designs and builds tiny optical instruments and custom lenses for medical device makers and defense customers.
Precision Optics is a small manufacturer that makes the eyes inside other companies' machines. It builds tiny cameras, lenses, and optical instruments that go into medical devices and defense equipment — the kind of parts that let a surgeon see inside a blood vessel or let a military system see a target clearly. It rarely sells to you or me; it sells to the companies that build the finished product.
The business runs on two main pieces. One is medical optics: Precision Optics makes small camera systems and endoscopes that medical device companies build into their surgical tools, and it also makes single-use versions that a hospital throws away after one procedure to avoid contamination. The other is custom optics for defense and industrial customers — specialized lenses and optical assemblies made to a customer's exact specifications. Because these parts are designed into someone else's product, switching suppliers is painful, which helps keep customers around. The company is tiny, with annual revenue around $20 million in its most recent year, and it is based in Gardner, Massachusetts. Small size cuts both ways here. It means the company is nimble and can build custom work that big optics houses don't want, but it also means a handful of large customers can swing the whole business. Precision Optics is not the low-cost mass producer — it competes on making difficult, small, precise things that others won't or can't.
The interesting bet is the push into single-use medical imaging. Disposable scopes solve a real problem: reusable ones must be cleaned and sterilized between patients, and if that process fails, patients get sick. A cheap single-use scope removes that risk. If that shift keeps spreading through hospitals, Precision Optics wants to be making the cameras inside the disposable tools — a small company trying to ride a big change in how medicine is practiced.
Saved answer · last researched 8 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Two customers paid for 68% of Precision Optics' sales last year
- 68% Two largest customers
- 32% All other customers
Precision Optics builds tiny lenses and optical parts for satellite and medical customers, and it depends on very few of them. In the fiscal year ending June 2026, two buyers made up 68% of the company's $31.5 million in revenue, with the biggest alone at about 41%. A single paused satellite order can therefore swing the whole business. Source: Datatooja (10-K filing summary), data from 2026
Timeline
Surgery and Night Vision
Precision Optics started in 1982 with a simple but powerful idea: make tiny lenses that could survive being sterilized, so doctors could see inside the body. Those first sterilizable endocouplers let it break into medical devices. It also found a second customer for its lens skills, becoming the sole supplier of optics for night vision goggles to ITT, a defense giant. That mix — medicine and defense — would define the company for years.
Going Public
By 1990 the company needed money to keep up its night vision work and to build out its own line of rigid endoscopes, so it sold shares to the public. It also made its first couplers for micro optical systems — early signs of the tiny-optics niche it would later lean on.
Joe Forkey Takes Over
Joe Forkey became CEO in 2011 with a plan to push the company toward micro optics and 3D imaging. He was no outsider: he had joined in 2003 and spent years as chief scientific officer, so he knew the technology from the inside. This was the start of a deliberate reshaping.
Buying Ross Optical
In June 2019 the company bought Ross Optical Industries, adding the ability to make optical components and full assemblies for medical, defense and industrial customers. It was a way to offer more of the finished product instead of just pieces.
Buying Lighthouse Imaging
Two years later, in October 2021, it acquired Lighthouse Imaging. That deal brought in electrical engineering and the know-how to develop complete medical visualization devices — another step from parts toward whole systems.
Moving to Nasdaq
In 2022 the company uplisted to Nasdaq. The goal was simple: more visibility, more big investors, and easier trading in its stock.
A $9 Million Cystoscopy Order
In May 2024 the company landed a $9 million production order for a single-use cystoscopy program, with deliveries starting that summer. It would supply the single-use endoscope assemblies for a cystoscopy surgery system — proof that its tiny-optics skills could win real, large-scale medical business.
A Record Year, Then a Pause
Fiscal 2026 was billed as a year of transformation: revenue hit a record $31.5 million, up 65%, mostly on the back of a top-tier aerospace and satellite communications customer. Production revenue doubled, and the net loss shrank from $5.8 million to $3.6 million. But management guided the next year to $30-33 million, warning that the satellite customer would temporarily pause orders — a reminder of how much one big customer can matter.