PicoJool has raised $27.5 million in Series A funding to bring its optical connectivity products for AI infrastructure to market. Socratic Partners led the round, with participation from Hudson River Trading. Following an earlier $12 million seed round led by Playground Global, PicoJool has raised $39.5 million in total.
The Palo Alto, California-based company develops vertical cavity surface emitting lasers, or VCSELs, and related optical products that move data between components in AI systems. It will use the new capital to expand its teams and facilities in the United States and Taiwan, qualify products with customers, and build manufacturing and support capacity.
PicoJool’s portfolio includes 100G and 200G VCSELs and lower-power 50G and 64G microVCSEL configurations. The company is developing connectivity products for systems ranging from 800G to 1.6T, 3.2T, and beyond. It has begun early sampling of chip-level products and is working with WIN Semiconductor and other foundries as it prepares for production.
The funding follows PicoJool’s June unveiling of its 200G VCSEL product family, which the company said exceeds 37GHz of bandwidth. Its work targets a growing constraint for AI data centers: moving more data while controlling power use.
KEY QUOTES:
“Reaching 200G per lane proved that the performance is there. Our focus now is execution.”
Al Yuen, Founder and CEO of PicoJool
“Moving data efficiently dictates how quickly and economically AI scales.”
Greg Waters, General Partner at Socratic Partners
