Celestial AI, a start-up developing an optical interconnect for disaggregated, exascale compute and memory clusters, raised $175 million in its Series C funding.
Celestial AI is working on Optical Compute Interconnect (OCI) to enable disaggregation of scalable data center memory and accelerated computing. The company says its Photonic Fabric is unconstrained by package beachfront limitations and can deliver data to any location on the compute die, directly to the point of consumption. It promises greater scalability and more than 10X lower latency and power consumption compared with any optical interconnect alternative, such as Co-Packaged Optics (CPO).
The latest funding round wass led by Thomas Tull’s U.S. Innovative Technology Fund (USIT). In addition to USIT, the round included participation from new and existing investors including AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Temasek, Temasek’s wholly owned subsidiary Xora Innovation, IAG Capital Partners, Samsung Catalyst, Smart Global Holdings (SGH), Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Engine Ventures, M-Ventures and Tyche Partners.
“This highly oversubscribed financing round is another testament to Celestial AI’s position to disrupt the market, and reflects the magnitude of business opportunity before us,” said Dave Lazovsky, Celestial AI founder and CEO. “Today’s advanced AI models require exponentially more I/O bandwidth and memory capacity but are currently constrained by low bandwidth and high latency. Our Photonic Fabric™ technology is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for Accelerated Computing optical interconnectivity, driven by unparalleled performance and efficiency.”
