nEye Systems raises $58 million Series B for silicon photonic switch
The company says its technology is 100x smaller, 10,000x faster, and 10x lower cost, while consuming 1000x less power compared with existing optical switch solutions
nEye Systems, an optical switch start-up founded by UC Berkeley technologists, has announced the completion of a $58 million Series B round of financing led by Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG, with participation from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund; Micron Ventures; NVIDIA; and Socratic Partners. This financing brings the company’s total funding to $72.5 million; nEye previously secured an unannounced Series A led by TEDA Holdings with support from Innolight Technology USA and additional Seed funds.
According to nEye, its optical switch technology is poised to transform the AI fabric by addressing critical communication bottlenecks in datacentres, high-performance computing (HPC), and AI and ML systems. Current infrastructures, which rely primarily on electrical switches, face significant challenges in power consumption as well as bandwidth limitations. This hinders utilisation and increases datacentre costs and power consumption. nEye says its wafer-scale optical circuit switch provides a more efficient and cost-effective solution by utilising direct optical connections, which offer virtually unlimited bandwidth.
“nEye’s groundbreaking technology has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and scalability of AI infrastructure,” said James Luo, general partner at CapitalG and nEye board member. “Their innovative optical circuit switch addresses critical bottlenecks facing datacentres and high-performance computing. We are thrilled to partner with professor Ming Wu and the entire nEye team on their audacious journey to redefine the landscape of AI computing.”
nEye says it has developed an industry-leading high-radix silicon photonic switch with ultra-low power consumption. Leveraging over 10 years of research from Ming Wu’s lab at UC Berkeley, the company says its optical switch solution offers high performance, low cost, and a compact form factor. Compared to existing optical switch solutions, nEye’s technology is 100x smaller, 1,000x lower power consumption, 10,000x faster, and 10x lower cost, the company adds.
“We are thrilled to have the support of CapitalG and our other esteemed investors as we scale our optical switch technology,” said Wu, co-founder of nEye Systems. “Our wafer-scale approach, backed by years of research at UC Berkeley, positions us to transform the AI fabric and enable the next generation of high-performance computing.”
Optical switches are gaining broad adoption, with Google already announcing optically reconfigurable AI supercomputers. nEye’s technology can be deployed in various applications, including network flattening, network resilience, and inside the rack to extend GPU cluster sizes and increase GPU utilisation efficiency.
