Photonics chip company Salience Labs announced the completion of a $125 million Series B funding round. The round was oversubscribed and was led by Bullhound Capital, with participation from AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank. The funds will be used to accelerate deployment of optical circuit switching (OCS) technology, scale volume manufacturing, and expand the company's U.S. operations in Silicon Valley.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Oxford, UK, Salience Labs focuses on using photonics technology to address the connectivity and energy consumption bottlenecks of AI data centers. In March this year the company launched a 32-port all-optical switch, and in September it released a 64-port version, which the company says is an industry first for silicon photonics OCS technology.
Existing investors Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures all continued to participate in this round; Bullhound Capital partner Callum Stewart will join the company's board of directors. CEO and co-founder Vaysh Kewada said OCS will play a key role in AI data center networks, and that high-performance optical switching is a prerequisite for meeting the "token economics" demands of workloads.