PALO ALTO — Silicon Valley hardware startup Photonic Labs has closed a $600 million Series C funding round at a $10 billion valuation, led by top tier venture funds and strategic semiconductor partners.
Optical Computing Breakthrough for AI Datacenters
Photonic Labs’ silicon photonics architecture uses light instead of electrical currents to process matrix operations, reducing energy requirements for large language model inference by up to 80% while increasing throughput tenfold.
“Energy efficiency is the single greatest bottleneck facing AI scaling. Optical compute is no longer theoretical—it is hitting commercial fab production today.”
— Sarah Lin, Managing Partner at Venture Capital Partners
Scaling Commercial Production
The fresh capital will fund the expansion of Photonic Labs’ advanced cleanroom fabrication facility in Oregon, with first commercial shipments slated for major cloud hyperscalers in early 2027.