Celestial AI Secures $250M

Celestial AI, a developer of optical computing technologies, has raised $250 million in a series C funding round. The capital will help the company commercialize its Photonic Fabric technology platform.

Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric optical connectivity solution enables the disaggregation of compute and memory, which allows each component to be effectively leveraged and scaled. The technology delivers over 25 times greater bandwidth and memory capacity while reducing latency and power consumption by up to 10 times compared to existing optical interconnect alternatives and copper, according to the company.

“Cluster sizes must scale from a few AI processors in a server to tens of processors in a single rack and thousands of processors across multiple racks, all while relying on high-bandwidth, low-latency network connectivity to handle massive data transfers between processors,” said David Lazovsky, CEO of Celestial AI.

The technology is designed to enable disaggregated, exascale compute and memory clusters. It is suited for applications such as AI models that require high levels of memory capacity and bandwidth, in addition to cloud services and data centers.

The company acquired Rockley Photonics’ silicon photonics portfolio last year in addition to a $175 million round. The company also added investor Lip-Bu Tan to its board of directors last month.

The current round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and saw support from new and existing investors. The funds bring the total amount raised to more than $515 million.