Surpassing Moore’s Law: Cognifiber Raises $6 Million Series A to Bring In-Fiber Photonic Processing to Market

CogniFiber, a deep technology company developing advanced in-fiber photonic processing systems, raised a $6 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by Chartered Group, a private equity firm specializing in disruptive technologies with a far-reaching presence in Europe and Asia. This investment opens the path to break through current processing speed barriers, unlocking many AI-driven business opportunities.

Today’s hyper-scale data centers and edge devices alike run on silicon-based processors. Moore’s law, the standard trend in processor evolution, predicts that the capability of chips will double every two years without increasing in size. This capability is fast approaching a wall as the industry struggles with today’s barriers while maintaining efficiency and reliability. Complex computations can now be done on the fly with light carried through optical fibers.

“This new ability to compute complex algorithms in a fraction of the time will leave Moore’s law in the rearview mirror,” said Dr. Eyal Cohen, Co-founder & CEO of CogniFiber. “In-fiber processing allows for the realization of a 100-fold boost in processing speed and efficiency.” Beyond leaping over the physical limitations of semiconductors, fiber-based processing radically cuts the cost of computing, which demands 1% of the world's electricity to operate and cool servers. This is even more important for Edge micro centers where high performance needs to co-exist with limited power resources.

Before officially founding the company in 2018, CogniFiber’s co-founders spent years bringing the technology to life, including working within Intel’s Ingenuity Partner Program. “Senior engineers at Intel were excited to drill down into every aspect of our technology, reviewing its viability to revolutionize how computers operate today,” said Professor Ze’ev Zalevsky, Co-founder & CTO of CogniFiber. “This technology will help deliver on the promise of photonic computing to safety, cybersecurity, autonomous driving, AI-developed medicines, and countless other applications.”

Working with industry leaders and Japanese investors to promote this revolutionary technology, the Series A funding will go towards creating and delivering a robust and scalable product to market. “The balance between Israel’s agile approach to innovation and the tradition of high-quality, value-focused technologies amongst Japanese investors creates excellent synergy where entrepreneurs feel they have true partners,” said Eyal Agmoni, Founder and Chairman of Chartered Group. “Together, these parties will usher in a new era of photonic computing”.