MIT Startup Lightmatter’s Photonic Processors Reduce Power Consumption in AI

$175 million Series C funding round.

Another startup, Optalysys, is developing encryption technology and photonic hardware to accelerate always-encrypted data, while Ayar Labs is accelerating data movement with its silicon photonics optical “chiplet.”

While Lightmatter has yet to name any existing customers, it claims to be enjoying massive demand from a range of cloud providers and AI companies. Harris himself foresees market domination. “Over the next few years, all of the GPUs in the world that are designed for AI training and inference or high-performance computing are going to be built on Passage,” he says.

What Does the Future Hold?

In October, Lightmatter announced its latest Series D funding round had raised $400 million, bringing its total funding since inception to $850 million. These latest investments will fund the manufacture and deployment of Lightmatter’s photonic chips in partner data centers, as well as the expansion of its teams across the U.S. and Canada.
As for further exploring the potential of photon computing? That’s also in the pipeline. “We’re going to continue looking at all of the pieces of computers to figure out where light can accelerate them, make them more energy efficient, and faster, and we’re going to continue to replace those parts,” Harris says. “Right now, we’re focused on interconnect with Passage and on compute with Envise. But over time, we’re going to build out the next generation of computers, and it’s all going to be centered around light.”