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Celestial AI, a developer of optical interconnect technology, has announced a successful series B funding round, raising $100 million for its Photonic Fabric technology platform. IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) and Temasek’s Xora Innovation fund led the investment.
Other participants included Samsung Catalyst, Smart Global Holdings (SGH), Porsche Automobil Holding SE, The Engine Fund, ImecXpand, M Ventures and Tyche Partners.
According to Celestial AI, their Photonic Fabric platform represents a significant advancement in optical connectivity performance, surpassing existing technologies. The company has raised $165 million in total from seed funding through series B.
Tackling the “memory wall” challenge
Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models — such as the widely used GPT-4 for ChatGPT and recommendation engines — require exponentially increasing memory capacity and bandwidth. However, cloud service providers (CSPs) and hyperscale data centers face challenges due to the interdependence of memory scaling and computing, commonly called the “memory-wall” challenge.
Celestial AI, a revolutionary engineering and photonics firm, announced their largest ever funding round of $100M to support the large-scale development and production of their innovative photonic fabric technology platform. The round was backed by venture capital firms including IGC Capital, Signature Growth Capital, and Siemens-backed venture fund Next47, as well as the Open AI fund which is sponsored by Microsoft and Intel.
The photonic fabric platform holds the potential to revolutionize the way photonics-based systems are developed and deployed, by giving engineers the ability to rapidly design, produce, and tune photonic systems at scale. Traditional designs for photonic systems involve hand-crafting integrated circuits, which can be time-consuming and costly. Through their photonic fabric platform, Celestial AI aims to achieve the same functionality as traditional designs, but at a fraction of the cost and time investment.
The photonic fabric platform has already been used to increase the speed of machine learning algorithms, as well as to drastically reduce the energy consumption associated with edge computing. These results were recently presented by the company at the OpticalFabric Summit in San Francisco, where the company showcased their technology, as well as its potential implications for AI, ML, and a number of other verticals.
Celestial AI CEO, Manvi Mahajan, noted that the funds would help the company continue to develop their platform, which includes investing in the company’s team of engineers and innovators. The funds will also serve to back the company’s efforts in bringing the photonic fabric platform to the consumer market.
The field of photonics is quickly rising in relevance and importance, especially as industry leaders seek to create more efficient and optimized technologies and solutions. With their photonic fabric platform, Celestial AI is poised to become a major player in this space. The company’s recent funding round is just one of the many steps it is taking to ensure its success in the market, and we anticipate to see further exciting developments from them in the near future.
