Ayar Labs secures $155m to scale optical interconnects
Optical interconnect firm Ayar Labs has secured $155 million in financing led by Advent Global Opportunities and Light Street Capital to break down the AI bottleneck of data movement with its optical I/O technology.
This brings the company’s total funding to $370 million and raises the company’s valuation to above $1 billion.
This round, which will allow the company to scale its optical I/O technology, has many prominent investors including AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, and NVIDIA, 3M Ventures and Autopilot, Applied Ventures LLC, Axial Partners, Boardman Bay Capital Management, GlobalFoundries, IAG Capital Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Playground Global, and VentureTech Alliance.
“The leading GPU providers – AMD and NVIDIA – and semiconductor foundries – GlobalFoundries, Intel Foundry, and TSMC – combined with the backing of Advent, Light Street, and our other investors underscores the potential of our optical I/O technology to redefine the future of AI infrastructure,” said Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. “We are incredibly fortunate to have the backing of Light Street’s deep expertise in technology-specific investments as well as Advent’s robust private and growth equity background in this funding round.”
“We believe optical I/O is on the cusp of revolutionising the future of AI infrastructure, and we recognise the significant growth potential of in-package optical interconnects,” said Jordan Katz, partner at Advent Global Opportunities, who will be joining Ayar Labs’ Board of Directors.
“Our deep research into the interconnect market revealed that Ayar Labs is led by a world-class team, has industry-leading technology, and exciting engagements with Tier 1 customers. We believe that supporting Ayar Labs and its groundbreaking technology will offer transformative benefits to AI systems.”
