OpenLight Secures $34M Series A to Advance Integrated Photonics for AI Data Centers

OpenLight, a company specializing in custom Photonic Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (PASIC) chip design and manufacturing through heterogeneous integration, has raised $34 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Xora Innovation and Capricorn Investment Group, with participation from Mayfield, Juniper Networks (now part of HPE), Lam Capital, New Legacy Ventures, and K2 Access.

The funding marks OpenLight’s transition from a Synopsys subsidiary to an independent, venture-backed company focused on addressing the demand for faster, more energy-efficient data movement in AI data center networks. The shift from electrical to optical interconnects is accelerating to support AI-scale workloads, with integrated photonics serving as a key enabler for next-generation data center infrastructure. OpenLight’s technology also supports applications in telecom, automotive and industrial sensing, IoT sensing, healthcare, and quantum computing.

OpenLight’s Process Design Kit (PDK), built on heterogeneous integration of indium phosphide and silicon photonics, provides customers with a library of passive and active components, including integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers, and detectors. Validated by Tower Semiconductor, a leading photonics foundry, the PDK enables production-ready designs, allowing customers to ...