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October 16 Lightmatter, a firm based in Mountain View, California, that develops photonic technology for datacenter networking devices, announced on Wednesday that it had secured $400 million at a $4.4 billion valuation in a Series D fundraising round.
The investment round was headed by new investor T. Rowe Price, with involvement from previous backers such as Fidelity and Alphabet’s GV.
With the most recent fundraising less than a year after the prior round, the firm has raised $850 million since its founding as it looks to take advantage of the datacenter expansion and the need for more effective infrastructure in the artificial intelligence (AI) competition that ChatGPT started.
According to Lightmatter, the new funding will be utilized to grow its 200-person workforce in the US and Canada and produce and implement its photonic chips in partner data centers.
The money might lead to a possible IPO and comes after Simona Jankowski, a former Nvidia executive, was appointed CFO.
The business, which uses silicon photonics to provide ways for computer chips to interact and carry out computations, claimed to be in high demand from cloud and artificial intelligence businesses, though it would not identify its clients.
Although the idea of using light in computers is not new and has the potential to lead to quicker, more energy-efficient operations, it has historically been difficult to create the essential components.
Lightmatter, which was founded in 2017, claims that its patented technology allows photonics chips to transport data, improving the bandwidth and performance of AI clusters while using less power. Next year is anticipated to see the launch of its first big clusters.
It faces competition from other firms developing photonics technology as well as from large chipmakers who may be working on similar projects internally. Lightmatter’s investors believe the firm would gain from collaborating with industry participants.
