Celestial AI, the company behind the Photonic Fabric optical interconnect platform, has raised $250 million in its Series C1 funding round. Led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, the round also saw participation from BlackRock, Maverick Silicon, Tiger Global Management, and Lip-Bu Tan. Also, existing investors AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Temasek, Xora Innovation, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, and The Engine Ventures participated in the round.
This latest funding brings Celestial AI’s total capital raised to over $515 million, helping the company revolutionise AI connectivity. With this funding, the company is reported to have attained a valuation of $2.5 billion.
The Series C1 funding will be instrumental in expanding and qualifying Celestial AI’s supply chain for high-volume production, addressing the growing demand from cloud and enterprise AI customers. As AI workloads scale exponentially, traditional copper-based interconnects are reaching physical limits, making optical solutions a critical enabler of future computing.
Led by veterans in the industry
Celestial AI was established in 2020 by industry veterans David Lazovsky and Preet Virk. David Lazovsky, serving as the company’s CEO, brings extensive experience from the semiconductor industry. Prior to co-founding Celestial AI, he founded and led Intermolecular, Inc., a company specialising in advanced materials and processes for the semiconductor and clean energy sectors.
Preet Virk, the COO, also has a rich background in the semiconductor industry. Before co-founding Celestial AI, he held leadership positions at companies like Macom and Mindspeed Technologies, where he focused on developing high-performance analog and mixed-signal semiconductor solutions.
Genesis of the idea
The inception of Celestial AI was driven by the founders’ recognition of a looming challenge in AI and machine learning workloads: the data movement bottleneck. As AI models become increasingly complex, the demand for rapid and efficient data transfer escalates, outpacing the capabilities of traditional electronic interconnects. Lazovsky and Virk foresaw that this inefficiency in data movement would become a critical obstacle in scaling AI applications. This insight led them to explore photonics as a solution, culminating in the development of the Photonic Fabric technology.
Celestial AI’s mission is to revolutionise computing by integrating photonics into AI accelerators, thereby overcoming the limitations imposed by traditional electronic data movement.
Backbone of next-gen AI computing solutions
The company’s Photonic Fabric platform enables optical interconnects for semiconductors, facilitating high-speed, low-power, and cost-effective data transmission. This innovation addresses the escalating computational demands of AI applications and positions Celestial AI at the forefront of next-generation computing solutions.
Unlike traditional electrical interconnects, which struggle with bandwidth and power efficiency at scale, Photonic Fabric uses light-based communication to achieve higher speeds, lower latency, and improved energy efficiency.
By offering a comprehensive suite of connectivity, switching, and packaging solutions, Celestial AI aims to establish optical scale-up networks as the backbone of next-generation AI and high-performance computing (HPC). The technology is fully compatible with industry-standard semiconductor manufacturing and 2.5D packaging processes, ensuring easy adoption by chipmakers and data center operators.
Future outlook
The company is emerging as a key player in AI networking, challenging established interconnect technologies with superior optical solutions. As AI models grow in complexity and require massive data movement, the adoption of optical interconnects could define the next era of AI infrastructure. Backed by major investors and strategic partners, Celestial AI is well-positioned to lead the transition to high-performance optical computing in the years ahead.
“With the emergence of complex reasoning models and agentic AI, the requirements on AI infrastructure are compounding,” said David Lazovsky, CEO of Celestial AI. “Cluster sizes must scale from a few AI processors in a server to tens of processors in a single rack and thousands of processors across multiple racks, all while relying on high-bandwidth, low-latency network connectivity to handle massive data transfers between processors. Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is the only technology platform capable of meeting these critical demands while setting new standards for bandwidth, latency, energy efficiency and total cost of ownership. We are excited to work with top global investors who bring the capital and commitment to support our long-term mission of revolutionising AI infrastructure with our Photonic Fabric.”
“Amid the explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence, Celestial AI is uniquely positioned to meet the soaring demands of data center infrastructure with its disruptive Photonic Fabric technology,” said Tony Kim, Head of Fundamental Equities Technology Group at BlackRock.
“By providing terabytes of low latency bandwidth and in-network computing, as well as in-network high-speed, high-capacity memory, Photonic Fabric enables the next generation of AI infrastructure, drawing upon the company’s rich IP in optical interconnect within chip, within package and between package-to-package”, said Andrew Homan, Managing Partner at Maverick Silicon.
“Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is fundamentally transforming AI computing, networking and memory solutions by addressing critical infrastructure challenges with unmatched performance and energy efficiency,” said Diane Bryant, Independent Director at Celestial AI and Broadcom Inc.” I have witnessed the innovative potential of their technology to unlock new capabilities and as a member of the Board of Directors, am proud to be on the Celestial AI team as they commercialise their ground-breaking Photonic Fabric platform.”
Source: https://techfundingnews.com/
