OpenLight Secures $34M Series A for AI Chip Interconnects

Integrated photonics startup OpenLight Photonics Inc. has closed a $34 million Series A funding round. Xora Innovation and Capricorn Investment Group co-led the investment. Additional participants included Juniper Networks, Mayfield, Lam Capital, New Legacy Ventures, and K2 Access. This funding follows OpenLight's spin-out from Synopsys Inc., aiming to accelerate the adoption of silicon photonics interconnects.

The company addresses a critical bottleneck in AI and high-performance computing workloads. Modern AI models, powered by vast GPU clusters like those from Nvidia, face connectivity limitations rather than computational ones. Existing electronic interconnects lack the necessary throughput, causing GPUs to sit idle awaiting data.

Accelerating Optical Interconnects

OpenLight designs and builds photonic application-specific integrated circuits (PASICs) for these advanced optical interconnects. PASICs manipulate light to transmit data between chips at significantly higher speeds than traditional electronic methods. OpenLight's technology, which integrates indium phosphide, enables 200G and 400G modulators directly on-chip, offering dense, scalable optical interconnects with lower power consumption.

OpenLight offers design services, a Process Design Kit (PDK) for customer-led design, and manufacturing in partnership with Tower Semiconductor Inc. This approach allows customers to customize PASICs for specific applications, differentiating from off-the-shelf solutions. The company targets semiconductor firms, network equipment manufacturers, and hyperscale data center operators. Furthermore, OpenLight's technology extends to telecommunications, automotive sensing, and quantum computing.

The funding will scale operations and deepen R&D efforts. OpenLight plans to expand its PDK library with faster modulators and advanced on-chip laser technology. The market for high-speed data movement is growing, with companies like Broadcom also active in the broader networking space. OpenLight expects its first customers to begin production in late 2025.