nEye Systems, an optical switch startup founded by UC Berkeley technologists, announced the completion of a $58 million Series B round of financing led by Alphabet’s independent growth fund CapitalG with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund); Micron Ventures; NVIDIA; and Socratic Partners. This funding brings the company’s total funding to $72.5 million. nEye had previously secured an unannounced Series A led by TEDA Holdings with support from Innolight Technology USA and additional Seed funds.
nEye’s optical switch technology is poised to transform the AI fabric by addressing critical communication bottlenecks in data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems. And current infrastructures, which depend primarily on electrical switches, face significant challenges in power consumption and bandwidth limitations. This impacts utilization and increases data center costs and power consumption. nEye’s wafer-scale optical circuit switch (OCS) provides an efficient and cost-effective solution by utilizing direct optical connections, which offer virtually unlimited bandwidth.
nEye pioneered an industry-leading high radix silicon photonic switch with ultra-low power consumption. Utilizing over 10 years of research from Professor Ming Wu’s lab at UC Berkeley, nEye’s optical switch solution offers high performance, low cost, and a compact form factor. NEye’s technology is 100 times smaller, 1,000 times lower power consumption, 10,000 times faster, and 10 times lower cost than existing optical switch solutions.
Optical switches are gaining adoption quickly, with Google already announcing optically reconfigurable AI supercomputers. And nEye’s technology can be deployed in various applications, including network flattening, network resilience, and inside the rack to extend GPU cluster sizes and increase GPU utilization efficiency.
KEY QUOTES:
“nEye’s groundbreaking technology has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and scalability of AI infrastructure. Their innovative optical circuit switch addresses critical bottlenecks facing data centers and high-performance computing. We are thrilled to partner with Professor Ming Wu and the entire nEye team on their audacious journey to redefine the landscape of AI computing.”
– James Luo, General Partner at CapitalG and nEye board member
“We are thrilled to have the support of CapitalG and our other esteemed investors as we scale our optical switch technology. Our wafer-scale approach, backed by years of research at UC Berkeley, positions us to transform the AI fabric and enable the next generation of high-performance computing.”
– Professor Ming Wu, co-founder of nEye Systems
