LightSolver Awarded $13.7M to Advance All-Optical Supercomputer

Optical computing technology developer LightSolver will receive more than $13.5 million in funding after being selected for the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator Program. The company, which has developed a laser-based high-performance computing paradigm, will receive an initial grant of €2.5 million ($2.7 million) from the EIC Fund, combined with a future equity investment of €10 million. LightSolver said it will use financing to advance commercialization of its platform and accelerate its growth in the high-performance computing (HPC) sector.

Founded in 2020 by Ruti Ben-Shlomi and Chene Tradonsky of the Weizmann Institute, LightSolver aims to build what it claims will be the first all-optical supercomputer, a device that is more energy efficient than classical computers. “Our laser-based processor can tackle large and complex computations faster than GPUs,” said Ben-Shlomi, CEO and co-founder of LightSolver. “It is also much less environmentally demanding than quantum computers, requiring no vacuum or ultracold temperatures, which means that it can live in a data center.”

Applications such as computer-assisted engineering, bioscience computations, and intractable optimization problems are among the workloads that can be accelerated by LightSolver’s platform.

The EIC is an initiative by the European Commission to support high-potential startups, small and medium-sized enterprises, and researchers in developing and scaling breakthrough innovations. LightSolver is one of 68 companies chosen by the EIC from a pool of 969 applicants.