Salience Labs Limited, a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure, announced the successful close of $30 million in Series A financing led by ICM HPQC Fund and Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, Inc., to further the development of its optical switches for large scale AI connectivity. 

Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund are joined by Braavos, and continued participation from existing investors Oxford Sciences Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and leaders from the global semiconductor industry including Silicon Catalyst and Jalal Bagherli.

“What our customers want is a photonic switch to connect their AI clusters that is compatible with existing infrastructure while delivering high bandwidth, low latency and significant power savings. The completion of this round will further our development and help us bring our product to customers to enable not just the savings, but large cluster connectivity.” said Vaysh Kewada, Co-founder and CEO of Salience Labs.

“Silicon photonics is a promising technology to deliver significant advancements in energy-efficient performance for AI data centers,” said Anand Kamannavar, Vice President and Global Head of Applied Ventures.

 “Salience's optical switch solution has the potential to enable a new generation of interconnect network architectures for faster and more efficient AI systems.”

“Salience Labs has done a tremendous job in developing a portfolio of innovative silicon photonics products that addresses critical needs in data center and AI infrastructure market.” said Dr. Jalal Bagherli, investor of Salience Labs and former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor that was acquired by Renesas. 

In conjunction with the closing of the Series A financing, Salience Labs is appointing Dr. Jeffrey to the Board of Directors, where he joins Jack Edmondson, Chief Investment Officer of Oxford Sciences Enterprises, and Daniel Armbrust, co-founder of Silicon Catalyst, CEO of the SEMATECH semiconductor consortium and appointee to the Industrial Advisory Committee, which advises the Department of Commerce on the R&D strategy for the CHIPS Act.

Dr. Jeffrey is an astronomer with a career spanning the Executive Office of the President of the United States, to leading HRL to being the Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an institution boasting three Nobel prize laureates and ties to a dozen more, and he served as the CEO of SRI International.