Lightmatter

With our new $400M Series D funding round, backed by T. Rowe Price, GV (Google Ventures), Fidelity Investments, and others, we are excited to expedite the roll-out of our photonic engine Passage™ within partner data centers by the end of next year. “The interconnect layer or layers are really what turn racks of CPUs and GPUs into effectively one giant machine — so it follows that the faster the interconnect, the faster the datacenter. And it is looking like Lightmatter builds the fastest interconnect layer by a long shot, by using the photonic chips it’s been developing since 2018. ‘Photonics is coming way faster than people thought — people have been struggling to get it working for years, but we’re there,’” said our co-founder and CEO, Nicholas Harris, in an interview with TechCrunch. Read more from TechCrunch’s Devin Coldewey: https://shorturl.at/G4SiL

We’re excited to announce that Lightmatter has raised $400M in its Series D round led by T. Rowe Price, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), and Fidelity Investments, alongside other existing investors. This latest round will be used to scale Passage™ for broad deployment within partner data centers and prepare computing infrastructure for the demands of next-generation AI models. Our co-founder and CEO, Nicholas Harris on this milestone: “We’re not just advancing AI infrastructure—we’re reinventing it. With Passage, the world’s fastest photonic engine, we’re setting a new standard for performance and breaking through the barriers that limit AI computing. This funding accelerates our ability to scale, delivering the supercomputers of tomorrow today.” https://lnkd.in/gUi4ARbe

“It is increasingly likely that a final process node will exist with the best-known lithographic technology. Beyond this node, the economic cost and performance gain will no longer be commensurate. This slowdown presents a significant challenge at a time when the demand for more powerful computation, particularly for AI applications, has never been greater.” Read more from Lightmatter CEO Nicholas Harris Harris on the future of datacenter-scale chips and the path to artificial superintelligence, and beyond. https://lnkd.in/gYVMVFcp

Nicholas Harris, CEO and Co-founder of Lightmatter delivered an insightful keynote at the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS) 2024 in Boston, captivating an audience of 1,000 attendees from diverse sectors, including packaging technologists, equipment vendors, OSAT, and material suppliers. His presentation tackled the pressing challenges posed by the growing compute and data bandwidth demands driven by generative AI, highlighting traditional technologies' limitations. Harris articulated a compelling vision for Silicon Photonics as a crucial solution to meet these performance needs. He emphasized how Lightmatter’s optical interconnect technologies, Passage, are uniquely positioned to connect hundreds of thousands of chips within a high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnect framework. His talk underscored the critical role of innovative technologies in advancing the future of computing and data transmission. Concluding his presentation, Harris asked the packaging community to focus on the technology building blocks necessary to bring Silicon Photonics to high-volume manufacturing. His call to action highlighted the importance of collaboration and innovation in achieving scalable solutions for the future.

“Lightmatter is leading the revolution in networking for AI.” We’re honored to be recognized within the Lazard VGB AI Infra 40 list, which spotlights industry innovators reinforcing solutions across the AI infrastructure stack. At Lightmatter, we’re reinventing how chips can talk and calculate to power the AI revolution with light. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gd2UGSiQ

Join us in welcoming Rich Beyer and Robin Washington to our board of directors! Today, they join Lightmatter to support and advise the company as we work to power the next generation of computing. Richard brings over three decades of executive leadership experience across the semiconductor and telecommunications industries, and currently sits on the board of directors for Micron Technology, Inc. Robin is a board member of Alphabet, Honeywell International and Salesforce and currently serves as Chair of the leadership development, inclusion and compensation committee for Alphabet and lead independent director for Salesforce. She has over three decades of finance and operations experience in the technology and life sciences industries. https://lnkd.in/gfvsMecA Lightmatter is entering a phase of massive growth as we continue to scale our team to revolutionize the future of computing. To find more information about open roles, visit https://lnkd.in/eArUsQe

Our co-founder and CEO Nicholas Harris and newly-appointed CFO Simona Jankowski, CFA sat down last week with Ian King and Nick Turner at Bloomberg to discuss Lightmatter’s growth trajectory, the chip landscape, and what we see for the future. “Lightmatter believes that the use of artificial intelligence software is sparking a wholesale change in the computing industry. The massive size of new processors needed to develop AI software — along with the amount of data and energy required — mean greater efficiency is a necessity” – Ian King, Reporter, Bloomberg. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gR8FJU6b

Join us in welcoming Simona Jankowski, Lightmatter’s new Chief Financial Officer! Simona joins Lightmatter from NVIDIA, where she was vice president of investor relations and strategic finance. Prior to this role, she was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where she led equity research for the hardware and communications technology sectors and managed the Global Investment Research office in San Francisco. With 20+ years of experience, Simona has a proven track record of nurturing investor relationships and managing financial strategies. https://lnkd.in/gcxevKkk Simona’s appointment comes at a time of significant company growth, and we’re continuing to scale our team that’s revolutionizing the future of computing. For more information about open roles, visit https://lnkd.in/eArUsQe.

The AI computing revolution starts with a great website! See our newly revamped design at https://lightmatter.co/