Laser-based startup LightSolver wins €12.5m from European Innovation Council – High-Performance Computing News Analysis

TEL AVIV, Israel – August 6, 2024 – LightSolver, the creator of the laser computing paradigm, announced today that it has been selected for the European Innovation Council (EIC) accelerator program.

The company will receive an initial grant of €2.5 million from the EIC Fund, combined with a future equity investment of €10 million, for a total of €12.5 million. This distinction places LightSolver among 68 companies selected from a highly competitive pool of 969 applicants.

The funding underscores LightSolver’s commitment to building the first all-optical supercomputer that is more energy efficient than classical computers, dramatically reducing the industry’s carbon footprint and total cost of computing (TCoC). The company will leverage the resources granted by the EIC to accelerate the commercialization of its platform and growth in the high-performance computing (HPC) sector.

LightSolver’s innovative processor, the Laser Processing Unit (LPU), leverages the natural properties of light to perform complex mathematical operations, enabling industry and research to process computationally intensive workloads in a fast and energy-efficient manner. Applications such as computer-aided engineering (CAE), bioscience computations, and challenging optimization problems are among the workloads that can be significantly accelerated with the LightSolver platform.

“We are honored to join the ranks of pioneering startups in areas such as sustainability, MedTech, and space technology to receive EIC funding,” said LightSolver CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Ruti Ben-Shlomi. “The amount of energy used by computers worldwide is growing exponentially and is becoming unsustainable, hence the need for a new computing paradigm. Our laser-based processor can perform large and complex calculations faster than GPUs. It is also much more environmentally friendly than quantum computers, requiring no vacuum or ultracold temperatures, meaning it can operate in a data center.”

The European Innovation Council (EIC) is a European Commission initiative to support high-potential startups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and researchers in developing and scaling breakthrough innovations. Launched to promote Europe’s leadership in new technologies and innovation, the EIC aims to identify, support and invest in the most promising innovative projects in various sectors, including IT, energy, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, medicine and others.