Salience Labs has raised $125 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round to scale its photonic networking technology for artificial intelligence data center infrastructure. The round was led by Bullhound Capital, with Principal Callum Stewart joining Salience Labs’ Board of Directors. AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading, and British Business Bank also participated, along with existing investors Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and Silicon Catalyst Ventures.
The Oxford, England-based company plans to use the funding to accelerate deployment of its optical circuit switching technology, expand volume manufacturing, and increase its U.S. presence in Silicon Valley. Salience Labs is developing all-optical switching technology designed to address network latency, performance, efficiency, and power bottlenecks as AI data centers connect increasingly large numbers of GPUs.
Its fully integrated optical switch architecture is designed to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks and support scale-up networking for AI workloads. Salience Labs said the technology is built for high-volume manufacturing as data center operators move toward more optical connectivity and higher-performance networking architectures.
The financing follows Salience Labs’ live demonstration of a 64-port all-optical photonic switch at ECOC 2026, which the company described as an industry first for silicon photonics optical circuit switching. The company plans to develop future 128-port and 256-port systems that could extend the technology across scale-up and scale-out data center networks.
Salience Labs is also expanding its manufacturing relationships, including work with Keysight Technologies and Tower Semiconductor, as it prepares for higher-volume production. The company plans to expand its Silicon Valley operations with a second West Coast location while increasing its presence in additional international markets.
The company is targeting a rapidly expanding market for AI networking infrastructure. Dell’Oro Group forecasts cumulative spending on data center switches deployed in AI back-end networks will approach $1 trillion between 2026 and 2030, with scale-up networking expected to represent more than half of the market by 2030.
Founded in 2021, Salience Labs builds on more than a decade of silicon photonics research originating from the University of Oxford and the University of Münster. Its technology is designed to provide high-speed, ultra-low-latency optical networking capable of reducing infrastructure bottlenecks for demanding AI workloads.
KEY QUOTES:
“OCS will play a critical role in AI datacenter networking. As customers roll out optical links in their datacenters, high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver the token economics that workloads demand. Salience Labs has demonstrated a market-leading technology: a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well to high-volume manufacturing. This funding, alongside the support of our investors AMD Ventures and Intel Capital, will accelerate our growth into high-volume production to enable world-leading performance in AI data centers.”
Vaysh Kewada, CEO And Co-Founder Of Salience Labs
“The investor base and customer relationships Salience Labs has developed really speak to the capability of the leadership: Vaysh has assembled a strong team fully focused on designing a switch architecture that both aligns with customers’ near-term roadmaps but also scales with them far into the future. Bullhound Capital is proud to back this transformational company that is bringing to reality the next generation of high-performance data centers.”
Callum Stewart, Principal At Bullhound Capital
“AI infrastructure is increasingly being designed at rack scale, where networking has a direct impact on system performance, efficiency and economics. Salience Labs is developing a differentiated, integrated optical switching architecture aimed at addressing these challenges, and AMD Ventures is pleased to support the team as it scales its technology and manufacturing capabilities.”
Patrick Rundell, Director At AMD Ventures
“Photonics is quickly becoming essential to scaling AI infrastructure, and optical circuit switching can unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency. Salience Labs stands out through its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification, addressing key challenges to deploying optical switching at scale.”
Srini Ananth, Managing Director At Intel Capital
