News Article

Ayar Labs Marks Continued Growth With New Financing

Thursday 2nd May 2019

Ayar Labs has announce that it has secured additional funding to fuel its growth as it drives to productize its TeraPHY optical I/O chiplets and SuperNova multi-wavelength lasers in 2019. The funding comes on the heels of the Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), where there was significant industry focus on the need for integrating silicon photonics based optical interconnect into semiconductor packages - a technique that promises to dramatically improve application performance, significantly reduce power consumption, and reduce overall datacenter platform costs for the Artificial Intelligence, High Performance Computing, Cloud, and Telecom markets.

“Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has a long history of supporting promising technology companies,” said Lafe Vittitoe, Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank. “Ayar Labs has everything we look for in an investment -- differentiated technology that addresses a large market opportunity, strong management and technology teams, and committed investors. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with Ayar Labs.”

The funding, which totals $3 million, comes in the form of a flexible draw down term loan and will be used on specific capital and manufacturing related expenditures as Ayar Labs ramps sampling and production. “SVB is a strategic long-term partner on our journey to bring our revolutionary technology to market,” said Charles Wuischpard, CEO of Ayar Labs. “Our customers and partners are excited at the progress we're making; SVB's investment will fuel our growth and accelerate our volume product introduction.”

Ayar Labs is also pleased to announce that it has been awarded a DARPA grant as part of the “Photonics in the Package for Extreme Scalability” (PIPES) program, a research initiative that seeks to develop high-bandwidth optical signaling technologies for digital microelectronics. Through the grant, Ayar Labs will work to accelerate the adoption and integration of the Advanced Interface Bus (AIB), a royalty-free high-bandwidth electrical interconnect standard, which will be used to link third-party chips to TeraPHY.

Additionally, to support its growing design win activities, Vladimir Stojanovic, a co-founder of Ayar Labs and Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, will be joining Ayar Labs in a full-time capacity to lead system architecture.