Lightmatter, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup that makes photonics technology in data center networking chips, said Wednesday it raised $400 million in a Series D funding round at a $4.4 billion valuation.
New investor T. Rowe Price led the funding round, with existing backers including Fidelity and Alphabet’s ( NASDAQ:GOOGL ) GV also participating.
The latest funding comes less than a year after its last raise, bringing its total since its founding to $850 million as the company looks to capitalize on the data center boom and the need for more efficient infrastructure in the race on artificial intelligence (AI) started by ChatGPT.
Lightmatter said its new funds will be used to build and deploy its photonic chips in partner data centers, as well as to expand its 200-person team in the US and Canada.
The funding follows the appointment of former Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ) executive Simona Jankowski as CFO, and could pave the way for a possible public offering.
“This is probably the last private funding round,” said co-founder and CEO Nick Harris. “We have closed very big deals. And that is why this level of funding is possible. We see a future where most of the high-performance computing and artificial intelligence chips will very soon be based on Lightmatter technology.”
The company, which develops methods for computer chips to communicate and perform calculations using silicon photonics, said it was seeing huge demand from cloud providers and AI companies, but declined to name its customers.
While the idea of using light in computing is not new and offers the potential for faster and more energy-efficient processes, creating the necessary components has historically been a challenge.
Founded in 2017, Lightmatter says its proprietary technology enables photonics chips to transfer data, increasing the bandwidth and performance of AI clusters while reducing power consumption. Its first large clusters are expected to be operational next year.
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Reference;
Reuters (2024) Photonic startup Lightmatter raises $400 million amid AI datacenter boom, eyes IPO next By Reuters, Investing.com. Investing.com. Available at: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/photonic-startup-lightmatter-raises-400-million-amid-ai-datacenter-boom-eyes-ipo-next-3666144 (Accessed: 16 October 2024).
