Photonic computing startup Lightmatter raises $400M at $4.4B valuation

Lightmatter said it raised $400M in a new funding round, valuing the photonic computing startup at $4.4B.

The Series D funding round, which brings the total capital raised to date to $850M, was led by new investors advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from existing investors, including Fidelity Management & Research Company and Google Ventures, a unit of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL).

The Mountain View, Calif.-based startup develops photonic tech used in datacenter networking chips. The company notes that it has invented the world’s first 3D-stacked photonics engine called Passage, which is capable of connecting thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light in extreme-scale data centers for the advanced AI and high performance computing, or HPC, workloads.

Lightmatter said that the funding will help it ready Passage for mass deployment in partner data centers.

“With Passage, the world’s fastest photonic engine, we’re setting a new standard for performance and breaking through the barriers that limit AI computing,” said Lightmatter’s Co-Founder and CEO Nick Harris. “This funding accelerates our ability to scale, delivering the supercomputers of tomorrow today.”

In July, Lightmatter appointed Simona Jankowski as CFO, who had previously worked at Nvidia and Goldman Sachs. Since Lightmatter’s last funding announcement in December 2023, the company has expanded its footprint with an office in Toronto and continues to grow its team.

Harris is eyeing a future IPO for the company. He also sees demand from cloud and AI companies, as per a report from Reuters.