Lip-Bu Tan backs Celestial AI as it tops $500m for photonic fabric
Celestial AI has raised $250m for its Photonic Fabric optical interconnect technology platform, bringing the total funding for the startup to $515m.
The Series C1 funding round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Maverick Silicon, Tiger Global Management and Lip-Bu Tan as new investors, as well as participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Temasek, Temasek’s wholly-owned subsidiary Xora Innovation, Porsche Automobil Holding and The Engine Ventures.
The funding will enable the company to expand and qualify its volume manufacturing supply chain for chiplets using the technology
“With the emergence of complex reasoning models and agentic AI, the requirements on AI infrastructure are compounding,” said Lazovsky. “Cluster sizes must scale from a few AI processors in a server to tens of processors in a single rack and thousands of processors across multiple racks, all while relying on high-bandwidth, low-latency network connectivity to handle massive data transfers between processors”
Lazovsky says the photonic fabric is the only technology platform capable of meeting these demands while meeting the requirements of higher bandwidth and energy efficiency and lower latency.
Celestial AI now provides offers a full suite of products with connectivity, switching and packaging solutions which serve as the foundation for optical scale-up networks for accelerated computing. A key point is that the technology is fully compatible with industry standard manufacturing and 2.5D packaging processes and Lazovsky says the company has engagements with multiple hyperscalers, AI processor, custom silicon and packaging partners.
“Amid the explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence, Celestial AI is uniquely positioned to meet the soaring demands of data center infrastructure with its disruptive Photonic Fabric technology,” said Tony Kim, Head of Fundamental Equities Technology Group at BlackRock.
“By providing terabytes of low latency bandwidth and in-network computing, as well as in-network high-speed, high-capacity memory, Photonic Fabric enables the next generation of AI infrastructure, drawing upon the company’s rich IP in optical interconnect within chip, within package and between package-to-package”, said Andrew Homan, Managing Partner at Maverick Silicon.
“Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is fundamentally transforming AI computing, networking and memory solutions by addressing critical infrastructure challenges with unmatched performance and energy efficiency,” said Diane Bryant, Independent Director at Celestial AI and key target customer Broadcom. ” I have witnessed the innovative potential of their technology to unlock new capabilities and as a member of the Board of Directors, am proud to be on the Celestial AI team as they commercialize their ground-breaking Photonic Fabric platform.”
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