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Salience Labs, a
developer of photonic chips for AI data centre connectivity, has raised $125
million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round to accelerate the
deployment of its optical switching technology and expand its manufacturing
operations.
The round was led by
Bullhound Capital, with participation from AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI
Group, Hudson River Trading and British Business Bank. Existing investors
Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and
Silicon Catalyst Ventures also participated. As part of the investment, Callum
Stewart, Principal at Bullhound Capital, will join Salience Labs’ Board of
Directors.
Salience Labs develops
optical circuit switching (OCS) technology designed to improve connectivity
between GPUs in AI data centres. Its fully integrated, all-optical switching
architecture is designed to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks, addressing
growing demands on network performance, efficiency and power consumption as AI
computing infrastructure expands.
Built on more than a
decade of research in silicon photonics, the company’s integrated chip
architecture is designed for high-volume manufacturing and deployment across AI
data centre infrastructure.
Explaining the
importance of optical switching for AI data centres, Vaysh Kewada, CEO and
co-founder of Salience Labs, said:
OCS will play a
critical role in AI datacenter networking. As customers roll out optical links
in their datacenters, high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver
the token economics that workloads demand. Salience Labs has demonstrated a
market-leading technology: a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well
to high-volume manufacturing.
The funding follows
Salience Labs’ demonstration of its 64-port all-optical photonic switch at ECOC
2026, which the company describes as an industry first for silicon
photonics-based optical circuit switching. Salience Labs is also developing
128-port and 256-port switches to support larger networks and additional
applications in data-intensive environments.
Salience Labs is
working with organisations including Keysight Technologies and Tower
Semiconductor to scale its manufacturing operations. The company also plans to
expand its presence in Silicon Valley with a second West Coast location and
enter additional geographic markets.
The funding will
support the deployment of Salience Labs’ optical switching technology, the
expansion of high-volume manufacturing and further product development,
including its next-generation optical switches. The company also plans to grow
its engineering team to support these activities.