Celestial AI™, creator of the Photonic Fabric™ optical interconnect technology platform, recently announced that it has raised an additional $250 million in venture capital, bringing its total raised to date to $515 million. The AI startup is working hard to crack a key speed constraint in artificial intelligence. Recently, it has tapped photonics, a technology that uses light in order to create speedy links between AI computing chips and memory chips.
The Series C1 funding round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, with new investors including funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Maverick Silicon, Tiger Global Management and Lip-Bu Tan, as well as participation from existing investors including AMD Ventures, and Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), to name a few.
The photonic-based technology Celestial AI uses improves memory bandwidth, a key factor in AI performance. Currently, Nvidia reigns supreme in memory bandwidth due to its proprietary technologies called NVLink and NVSwitch. However, Celestial AI, like several other chip firms, is striving to come up with alternatives.
Celestial AI is developing a technology that can sit like a bridge between two or more chips, leveraging a different kind of photonics technology than its competitors. According to Celestial AI CEO Dave Lazovsky, the goal of this “photonic fabric, is to offer speed while saving space and power.
“There are no good answers right outside of Nvidia. What we had created with the photonic fabric does the same thing, but at a different level of energy efficiency and of latency.”
The Photonic Fabric technology by Celestial AI is fully compatible with industry standard manufacturing and 2.5D packaging processes. Through this funding, the company will be able to expand and qualify its volume manufacturing supply-chain to serve customer demand.
“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. 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 commercialize their ground-breaking Photonic Fabric platform.”
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International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE:IBM) is a multinational technology company and a pioneer in artificial intelligence, offering AI consulting services and a suite of AI software products. On March 10, the company announced that Mitsubishi Motor Sales of Canada has unveiled an innovative AI-powered tool designed to transform the customer experience for the new Mitsubishi Outlander 2025, an SUV by Mitsubishi. “The Intelligent Companion” is a first-time collaboration between WongDoody (an Infosys company and IBM ecosystem partner), Mitsubishi Motors Canada, and IBM.
It leverages the WatsonX portfolio of AI products from IBM and Mitsubishi Outlander 2025 data to offer a personalized, interactive 3D visual guide to the vehicle’s features, augmenting customer engagement during the purchasing decision. Meanwhile, WongDoody has developed the 3D visualization within “The Intelligent Companion” which demonstrates the vehicle’s features in an engaging and interactive way. Users will be able to experience the new Outlander in a real-world, Mitsubishi-branded environment.
“With the watsonx portfolio, clients can swiftly and efficiently integrate generative AI into their operations, leveraging their own enterprise data to help enrich customer experiences and boost productivity for the enterprise. Solutions like watsonx Orchestrate and watsonx.ai are designed to scale and accelerate AI impact, empowering businesses to transform how they go to market and become AI-first organizations.”
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/
