Salience Labs

Ayar Labs, founded in 2015 in San Jose, California, develops optical interconnect technology that uses light to transmit data between computer chips to address data transfer bottlenecks in AI systems.

Series D+ · $1.0B · 2026-09 · Valuation $3.8B

MangoBoost, founded in 2016 in Seattle, USA and Seoul, South Korea, develops DPUs that help data centers reduce energy consumption and optimize performance. The DPU market is becoming increasingly competitive, with many companies offering similar technology, including Microsoft FPGA smart NICs and Amazon Nitro.

Series A · $55M · 2023-10

Eliyan, founded in 2021 in Silicon Valley, USA, develops chiplet interconnect technology to accelerate AI chip processing speeds. In addition to chip-to-chip interconnects in chiplet-based designs, the company addresses growing memory capacity and bandwidth challenges in AI chips through its Universal Memory Interface (UMI). Its bidirectional interconnect approach targets the memory wall problem in large multi-chiplet designs, delivering up to 4x the performance of competing solutions at half the power consumption.

Series C · $295M · 2026-07 · Valuation $1.0B

Founded in April 2019 and headquartered in Haining, Zhejiang, Guoke Guangxin (CSPC) is a national high-tech enterprise focused on silicon nitride (SiN) photonic chip technology, covering materials, chip design, packaging, optoelectronic devices and system integration. Its products include datacom silicon photonic chips (400G/800G/1.6T), 3.2T/6.4T NPO/CPO and OIO chiplets, tunable narrow-linewidth coherent light sources, and FMCW/dToF solid-state lidar, serving AI clusters, high-speed data centers, fiber sensing and OCT applications. It acquired Dutch coherent laser company CHILAS in 2023; the team numbers 190+ with over 60% in R&D and 250+ patents.

Series B · 2026-09

Nuowanxin Microelectronics (registered name: Hangzhou Nuowanxin Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd.) was established in March 2025, headquartered in Xiaoshan, Hangzhou, with subsidiaries in Chengdu, Zhuhai, Shenzhen, and Shanghai. It focuses on dedicated electric chips for high-speed optoelectronic interconnection in AI data centers. With self-developed SerDes as the technical foundation, its products cover two lines: optical interconnection (CDR, oDSP) and electrical interconnection (AEC, ACC), targeting high-speed optical modules and active cable scenarios. Its main strategy is 'optical and copper advancing together' for domestic full-stack supply. The founder, Wen Rui, has over 15 years of experience in the high-speed optoelectronic interconnection chip industry. The company completed a pre-seed round of nearly 100 million yuan led by Haiyetiankong Venture Capital and followed by Honghui Fund within 8 months of its establishment. On July 30, 2026, it again received over 100 million yuan in pre-A round funding from Jiahe Asset, Shenglan Co., and Chengdu High-tech Venture Capital.

Series A · $28M · 2026-07

Haiguang Xinzheng is a provider of silicon photonics chips and high-speed optoelectronic interconnect products, including optical modules, active optical cables (AOC), and high-speed active electrical cables. Its products are deployed in AI data centers to support high-speed, high-density data transmission. The company is among the few globally with both silicon photonics chip design capabilities and the ability to develop and mass-produce silicon photonic optical modules.

IPO · $181M · 2026-06 · Valuation $2.3B

Aylight, a spinout from ETH Zürich, develops chip-scale multi-wavelength lasers using a frequency-modulated optical frequency comb (FM comb) architecture that generates multiple precisely spaced wavelengths from a single chip, targeting optical interconnects for AI data centers and high-precision FMCW sensing. Headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland.

Pre-Seed · $5M · 2026-07

Fractile, founded in 2022 in London, UK, develops advanced AI chips that run AI models 100x faster than traditional methods at 10x lower cost.

Series B · $236M · 2026-05

Enlightra, founded in 2021-2022 in Lausanne, Switzerland (YC W22), develops chip-scale multi-wavelength comb lasers for optical interconnects in data centers and AI clusters as replacements for copper cables.

Undisclosed · $15M · 2025-12

Xsight Labs , a nine-year-old Tel Aviv startup that makes programmable data processing units and Ethernet switches for AI and cloud data center networks, raised a $300+ million round at a $2.8 billion post-money valuation. Fidelity was the deal lead, with Aliya Capital Partners, Atreides Management, Artisan Partners, Battery Ventures, Diagonal Capital, Intel Capital, Key1 Capital, Maverick Capital, Sienna, T. Rowe Price, Union Group , and Valor Equity Partners also participating. More here .

Series D+ · $300M · 2026-07 · Valuation $2.8B

Solinide Photonics is a Gothenburg-based integrated photonics company spun out of Chalmers University of Technology in 2021 (formerly Iloomina AB). It develops silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits and integrated frequency combs that replace racks of individual lasers with a single chip generating dozens of precise wavelengths, cutting the power, cost and footprint of chip-to-chip data movement for AI data centres and telecommunications. Its first packaged silicon nitride O-band micro-comb system became operational in November 2025, and in December 2025 it demonstrated 60% optical efficiency across 28 wavelength channels in a rack-mounted system.

Seed · 2026-08

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Ra'anana, Israel, DriveNets builds cloud-native disaggregated networking software (Network Cloud / Distributed Disaggregated Chassis) for telecom carriers, and has extended the technology to AI infrastructure with its standards-based Ethernet DriveNets AI Fabric, supporting scale-up, scale-out and cross-cluster connectivity as well as front-end and storage networking for large GPU clusters, improving utilization, reducing network bottlenecks and speeding cluster deployment across heterogeneous compute. Its networks power carriers including AT&T and Comcast, supporting more than 30% of total U.S. internet traffic.

Series D+ · $1.0B · 2026-06 · Valuation $8.5B