Lightmatter

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Lightmatter is a Boston-based optical computing company that creates photonic integrated circuits and optical interconnects. [1]

The company was founded 2017 by Darius Bunandar, Thomas Graham, and Nicholas Harris as a spin-off from Dirk Englund's lab at MIT. [1] [2] They raised an $11M Series A in 2018, [3] an $80M Series B in 2021, [4] and a $154M Series C in 2023. [5]

Lightmatter offers two products as of 2024: an ASIC that uses optical computing for LLM training called Envise, and an optical interconnect platform called Passage that connects up to 48 chips with support for up to 768 Terabits per second between each chip. [6]

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References

  1. 1 2 "Startup accelerates progress toward light-speed computing". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1 March 2024.
  2. "Lightmatter". Golden.
  3. Coldewey, Devin (5 February 2018). "Lightmatter aims to reinvent AI-specific chips with photonic computing and $11M in funding". TechCrunch.
  4. Coldewey, Devin (6 May 2021). "Lightmatter's photonic AI ambitions light up an $80M B round". TechCrunch.
  5. Coldewey, Devin (31 May 2023). "Lightmatter's photonic AI hardware is ready to shine with $154M in new funding". TechCrunch.
  6. Patel, Dylan. "Beyond Advanced Packaging: Lightmatter Passage Chiplets Co-Packaged On Optical Interposer". www.semianalysis.com.