Ayar Labs, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised an additional $25 million in Series C1 funding, for its work in silicon photonics for chip-to-chip connectivity.
Ayar Labs uses industry-standard silicon processing techniques to deliver fast, high-density, low power optical I/O chiplets and multi-wavelength light sources.
The new funding brings the company’s total Series C raise to $155 million. The oversubscribed up round was led by new investor Capital TEN. VentureTech Alliance also entered the Series C expansion that included participation by previous investors Boardman Bay Capital Management, IAG Capital Partners, NVIDIA, and Tyche Partners. Existing strategic and financial investors include Applied Ventures, GlobalFoundries, Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, Intel Capital and Lockheed Martin Ventures.
“We’re extremely pleased with the ongoing interest and financing we’ve received from leaders in the semiconductor industry,” said Charles Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs. “This C1 adds sophisticated investor partners that will allow us to accelerate our strategic roadmap, and is further validation of our technology and plan to bring silicon photonics-based interconnect solutions to market at scale.”
NVIDIA, which participated in Ayar Labs’ earlier Series C raise in April 2022, increased its investment in the company.
“NVIDIA is reimagining the data center with integrated hardware, software and networking for accelerated computing,” said Craig Thompson, Vice President of Business Development, Networking Business Unit at NVIDIA. “Generative AI models with trillions of parameters are accelerating demand for this platform, which is why we are increasing our investment in Ayar Labs.”
