Optical networking startup Lumilens launches with $900M in funding

Lumilens Inc., a startup specializing in optical networking chips for artificial intelligence clusters, has successfully secured $900 million in funding. The majority of this capital, $700 million, was raised through a Series C round that valued the company at $5.51 billion. Leading the investment were Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech, Seligman Ventures, and Spark Capital, with additional support from more than a dozen other entities including Qualcomm Inc. Lumilens was founded by CEO Ankur Singla, who previously led two networking startups, Contrail Systems Inc. and Volterra Inc., which were sold for a combined $676 million.

Lumilens has already received orders worth billions of dollars for its optical chips, which can replace copper interconnects in data center operations with faster fiber-optic cabling. The company operates in two primary markets: scale-up and scale-out networking. Scale-up networking involves linking chips within a single rack, while scale-out networking connects different racks.

Lumilens has targeted the scale-up market with two product families: co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-packaged optics (NPO) chips. CPO chips are integrated directly into graphics processing units (GPUs), enabling the connection of thousands of GPUs, while NPO chips sit on the motherboard hosting the GPUs. Although CPO chips offer higher efficiency due to their proximity to the associated GPUs, NPO technology provides greater accessibility.

Lumilens' technology supports connections with bandwidth of 800 gigabits per second, 1.6 terabits per second or more, overcoming the distance limitations that copper wires face in scale-out networks. The company's optical chips are based on a common architecture called the LumiCore, which integrates photonic components, mixed signal integrated circuits, and interposers.

This LumiCore design reduces the time to develop new chips from years to months and streamlines the chip assembly process. Lumilens has also developed a custom manufacturing workflow featuring robots and AI software. The company plans to utilize the $900 million funding to further accelerate its chip development and manufacturing efforts.