By Krystal Hu

-Lightmatter, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup that develops photonics technology in data center networking chips, announced Wednesday that it has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round for a valuation of $4.4 billion.

New investor T. Rowe Price led the funding round, with participation from existing backers including Fidelity and Alphabet’s GV.

The latest funding came less than a year after the last raise, bringing total funding since inception to $850 million as the company attempts to capitalize on the data center boom and need for more efficient infrastructure in the race for artificial intelligence (AI) triggered by ChatGPT.

Lightmatter said its new capital will be used to manufacture and deploy its photonic chips in partner data centers, as well as expand its team of 200 people in the United States and Canada.

The funding follows the appointment of former Nvidia executive Simona Jankowski as CFO, and could pave the way for a possible public offering.

“This is likely our last private funding round,” said Nick Harris, co-founder and CEO. “We have booked some very important contracts. And that’s why this level of funding is possible. We see a future in which most high-performance computing and AI chips will be based on Lightmatter technology very soon. »

The company, which develops methods for computer chips to communicate and perform calculations using silicon photonics, said it was seeing huge demand from cloud providers and data processing companies. IA, but declined to name its clients.

Although the concept of using light in computing is not new and offers the possibility of faster and more energy-efficient processes, creating the necessary components has always been a challenge.

Founded in 2017, Lightmatter claims its proprietary technology enables photonic chips to move data, increasing AI cluster bandwidth and performance while reducing power consumption. Its first large clusters should be operational next year.

It competes with other companies working on photonics technology, as well as major chipmakers who might mount their own internal efforts to develop such technology. Lightmatter investors say the startup could benefit from collaborating with industry players.

“They try to have everyone in their ecosystem. This is a component that can work with probably any chip on the market. We’re not trying to lock anyone into a particular ecosystem. It could work with an Nvidia, Intel or AMD chip, or any custom chip,” said Erik Nordlander, general partner at GV.

(Edited by Elaine Hardcastle)