Optalysys announced it has raised £23 million in a Series A extension round to accelerate the commercialization of its photonic computing technology and support a planned expansion into the United States. The round was led by Northern Gritstone, with participation from imec.xpand, Lingotto Horizon, and the U.K. government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF). The financing is aimed at advancing Optalysys’ proprietary photonic chips and scaling go-to-market efforts as demand intensifies for faster and more energy-efficient computing infrastructure to support AI and cloud workloads.
Optalysys is developing technology that integrates data movement and processing on a single chip, combining silicon photonics with digital computing techniques. The company positions photonic computing as an approach that can address bottlenecks faced by conventional electronic systems, particularly around bandwidth, latency, and power consumption, as model training and inference workloads grow.
The company’s roadmap includes a programmable, high-density compute layer intended to run compute-intensive workloads, including generative AI and post-quantum algorithms. Optalysys also highlighted fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) as a key application area, enabling computation on encrypted data without exposing the underlying information—an increasingly relevant capability for secure cloud and enterprise deployments.
Optalysys said early forms of its FHE technology are already being used in digital form in its LightLocker Node servers, which it launched last year and describes as dedicated hardware designed for encrypted blockchain applications.
Northern Gritstone CEO Duncan Johnson said Optalysys is scaling toward global growth, citing the company’s team, technology, and commercial traction as key reasons behind the investment.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are at a defining moment in the evolution of computing. Photonic computing opens up fundamentally new capabilities, allowing data to be moved and processed with far greater speed and efficiency. This investment validates both the scale of the opportunity ahead and our ability to execute against it. It allows us to expand into new markets and take an important step towards making photonic computing a mainstream part of cloud infrastructure.”
Dr. Nick New, CEO and Co-Founder, Optalysys
“Recent acquisitions in the semiconductor industry have highlighted the role that photonics can play in addressing the limits of electronic computing, particularly in processing capability and power consumption, resulting from the demands of training and running even larger AI models. Optalysys’ approach uniquely combines data movement and compute within the same package. Expanding to the US is an exciting and natural next step for us, so that we can tap into its strong photonics ecosystem and the immense talent located in Silicon Valley.”
Robert Todd, CTO and Co-Founder, Optalysys
“Optalysys is scaling towards global success. The company is building technology for the next generation of computing and has the team, technology and commercial traction that we, as investors, want. We’re excited to support the team as they continue to commercialise their technology and deliver real-world impact across multiple industries.”
Duncan Johnson, CEO, Northern Gritstone
