OpenLight Closes $34M Series A to Accelerate Photonic Chip Innovation for AI-Driven Data Centers

OpenLight, a leader in custom Photonic Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (PASIC) chip design and manufacturing based on heterogeneous integration, today announced the close of its oversubscribed $34MSeries A. The round is co-led by Xora Innovation and Capricorn Investment Group. Other participants include Mayfield; Juniper Networks, now part of HPE; Lam Capital, the corporate venture arm of Lam Research Corporation; New Legacy Ventures; and K2 Access.

This round of financing completes OpenLight's transition from a Synopsys subsidiary to a high-velocity, venture-backed company positioned to address the growing demand for faster and more energy-efficient data movement in AI data center networks. As the shift from electrical to optical interconnects accelerates to support AI-scale workloads, integrated photonics is emerging as a core enabler of next-generation data center infrastructure. Additional applications for OpenLight's technology include telecom, automotive and industrial sensing, IoT sensing, healthcare and quantum computing.

OpenLight's Process Design Kit (PDK), based on the heterogeneous integration of indium phosphide and silicon photonics, gives customers access to a library of passive and active components covering integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers and detectors. This PDK has been validated at the leading photonics foundry, Tower Semiconductor, ensuring designs are production-ready from day one. This enables customers to create custom PASICs using proven building blocks, simplifying advanced chip development and accelerating time-to-market. OpenLight currently holds more than 360 patents covering its PDK and the manufacturing of heterogeneously integrated III-V photonics. The OpenLight PDK is already being used by over 20 companies to design and fabricate PASICs across a wide spectrum of applications.

With the new capital injection, OpenLight will expand its PDK library of active and passive photonics components, including its leading-edge 400Gb/s modulator and indium phosphide heterogeneously integrated on-chip laser technology. OpenLight will also ramp up its standard-based reference PICs at 1.6Tb/s and 3.2Tb/s to provide customers with the most flexible and leading-edge component design library available in the market. In addition, the company will scale its team to support customers as they transition to volume production over the next 12 months.