Lightmatter gets ‘quad-unicorn’ backing for optical interposer pitch

Optical processor developer Lightmatter Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) has raised US$400 million in a round of funding that values the company at US$4.4 billion. The Series D round brings the total raised by the company to US$850 million.

The round was led by unnamed new investors advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and included participation by existing investors GV (Google Ventures) and Fidelity Management & Research Company.

Lightmatter said the funds would be used to ready its Passage product for deployment in data centers.

Passage enables the 3D integration of ASIC chiplets onto optical “interposer” enabling vastly increased communication bandwidth between chiplets.

The company argues – apparently successfully – that Passage delivers the scaling required for next-generation applications including trillion-parameter large language models (LLMs) and artificial general intelligence (AGI).

“With Passage, the world’s fastest photonic engine, we’re setting a new standard for performance and breaking through the barriers that limit AI computing. This funding accelerates our ability to scale, delivering the supercomputers of tomorrow today,” said Nick Harris, co-founder and CEO of Lightmatter, in a statement.

Lightmatter recently appointed Simona Jankowski as CFO and has relocated its headquarters from Boston, Massachusetts, to Mountain View, Calif.) .