iPronics secures $125m for optical switching
Silicon photonics company iPronics has secured $125m in Series B funding to accelerate commercial deployment of programmable optical circuit switching for next-generation AI data-centre networks.
Spanish silicon photonics company iPronics has raised $125m in Series B funding to accelerate the commercial deployment of programmable optical switching for AI data centres.
The round was co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital, with NVIDIA and other new and existing investors participating. The investment brings iPronics’ total funding to $177m.
The company will use the funding to expand operations, accelerate customer deployments and meet demand for its iPronics Optical Networking Engine (ONE), a rack-mounted optical switch designed for AI infrastructure.
ONE uses silicon photonics-based optical circuit switching (OCS) to establish and reconfigure optical paths between network endpoints. Its integrated control, telemetry and APIs enable connectivity to be dynamically adjusted for different AI training and inference workloads.
The approach targets growing bandwidth and power challenges as GPU clusters scale and data-centre networks increasingly transition from electrical to optical interconnects.
For the photonics industry, the investment highlights the expanding role of silicon photonics beyond optical transmission towards programmable networking and switching. By dynamically allocating optical connections, OCS could help AI infrastructure scale bandwidth while managing power and network complexity.
iPronics is also expanding its US presence with a new office in Santa Clara, California, focused on product strategy, customer deployments and AI infrastructure partnerships.
