Salience Labs closes funding for photonic switches

Salience Labs Limited has closed $30 million in Series A financing led by ICM HPQC Fund and Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, Inc. The funds will be used to further the development of its photonic switches for large-scale AI connectivity.

Built for AI and focused on compatibility, reliability, and manufacturability, photonic switch chips developed from over 10 years of research solve fundamental networking bottlenecks, enabling high bandwidth and low latency connectivity for improved AI model performance.

“Our customers want a photonic switch to connect their AI clusters that is compatible with existing infrastructure while delivering high bandwidth, low latency and significant power savings. This financing round will further our development and help us bring our product to customers to enable savings and large cluster connectivity,” said Vaysh Kewada, Co-founder and CEO of Salience Labs.

In conjunction with the Series A financing, Salience Labs is appointing Dr. Jeffrey to the Board of Directors, where he joins Jack Edmondson, Chief Investment Officer of Oxford Sciences Enterprises, and Daniel Armbrust, co-founder of Silicon Catalyst, CEO of the SEMATECH semiconductor consortium and appointee to the Industrial Advisory Committee, which advises the Department of Commerce on the R&D strategy for the CHIPS Act.

“Salience Lab’s optical switches will enable unprecedented bandwidth and scalability for the next generation of AI and high-performance data centers. Photonics will unlock the full capability of modern servers while decreasing power consumption and cost,” said Dr. William Jeffrey, Chairman of the technical advisory committee on the ICM HPQC Fund and newly appointed Board Member of Salience Labs.

Salience Labs is also appointing Bonnie Tomei, a certified public accountant and an industry veteran, located in Silicon Valley, California, as Chief Financial Officer.

Other investors in the Series A round include Braavos, continued participation from existing investors Oxford Sciences Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and leaders from the global semiconductor industry, such as Silicon Catalyst and Jalal Bagherli.