Ayar Labs captures $155M to bring light into chip manufacturing
Gettyimages.com / Weiquan Lin
By
Ross Wilkers
Three of the world's most notable chip manufacturers and Lockheed Martin's venture capital arm are investors in Ayar Labs, which is touting light transfer as an answer to the artificial intelligence-energy quandary.
Ayar Labs, a developer of computer chips that use light to transmit data between each other, has captured $155 million in Series D capital to support its push into high-volume manufacturing.
Founded in 2015, Ayar Labs is pushing its optical input/output technology as an alternative to traditional electrical I/O in light of growing demand for large-scale artificial intelligence workloads that often run into energy limitations.
Advent International and Light Street Capital led the Series D round, which brings Ayar Labs’ total amount of investment raised since inception to $370 million and touted valuation to $1 billion.
AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, Nvidia, 3M New Ventures and Autopilot are among the new investors announced Wednesday. Take note of the first three names in the list, all of them being notable chip manufacturers themselves.
They join this group of existing investors that also took part in the new round: Applied Ventures LLC, Axial Partners, Boardman Bay Capital Management, GlobalFoundries, IAG Capital Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Playground Global and VentureTech Alliance.
By leaning on optical solutions, Ayar Labs believes enterprises can maximize compute efficiency and performance for AI infrastructure with an eye toward reducing energy costs and power consumption.
“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,” Ayar Labs’ co-founder and chief executive Mark Wade said in a release. “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.”
Ayar Labs describes its flagship product as the first in-package optical I/O offering that is standards-based, commercial-ready, and optimized for AI training and inference.
Jordan Katz, a partner at Advent Global Opportunities, will join Ayar Labs’ board of directors following the Series D round’s closure.
Lockheed Martin’s venture capital arm first backed Ayar Labs in 2020 to aid in the further development and commercialization of the latter’s main offering for use in AI and high-performance computing, among other applications.
Below is Mark Wade's Wednesday appearance on Bloomberg TV to explain Ayar Labs' strategy and vision.