Channel Angels Invests Lightmatter: Next-Gen Processors for AI Software, Cloud Workloads
Lightmatter has raised $154 million in Series C funding. The company develops power-efficient photonic processors — which allow cloud service providers to more efficiently scale generative AI (artificial intelligence) and HPC (high-performance computing) applications.
Key Lightmatter investors include SIP Global, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Viking Global Investors, GV (Google Ventures), HPE Pathfinder and existing investors. Channel Angels participated in the round.
Lightmatter, founded in 2017, is based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company has 113 employees listed on LinkedIn as of early June 2023. Lightmatter will leverage the funding to “arm some of the largest cloud providers, semiconductor companies, and enterprises with the power of photonic technology to bring a new level of performance and energy savings to the most advanced AI and HPC workloads,” the startup said in a prepared statement.
Mentore Ventures, Channel Angels & Sustainable Tech Partner
Lightmatter’s mission and focus align with that of Mentore Ventures — which owns Channel Angels and sister site Sustainable Tech Partner. The context: Channel Angels funds technology startups that sell to and through service providers, and Sustainable Tech Partner is a media site that empowers technology partners and their customers to achieve & maintain their sustainability goals.
Lightmatter co-founder and CEO Nick Harris
Lightmatter’s power-efficient photonic technologies are emerging at a key time for cloud service providers (CSPs). Think of it this way, the company says: As generative AI systems proliferate across industries, the energy consumed and capital needed to run these algorithms is rising exponentially. The result is excessive heat loads, stagnant performance per watt, and increasing operating costs.
Lightmatter co-founder and CEO Nick Harris says the company’s photonic technologies avoid those challenges in an energy-efficient way. In a prepared statement, he said: “Rapid progress in artificial intelligence is forcing computing infrastructure to improve at an unprecedented rate. The energy costs of this growth are significant, even on a planetary scale. Generative AI and supercomputing will be transformed by photonic technologies in the coming years, and our investors, partners, and customers are aligned with Lightmatter’s mission of enabling the future of computing infrastructure with photonics.”
Harris is backed by a growing roster of seasoned brainpower. Key hires in 2022, the company notes, included:
Richard Ho, who led Google’s Tensor Processing Unit program, joined as VP of hardware engineering
Ritesh Jain, who led datacenter chip packaging at Intel, also joined as VP of hardware engineering.
Jessie Zhang, who led corporate financial planning at Apple, joined as VP of finance.
Steve Klinger, former VP at Innovium, joined as VP of product.
The hires won’t end there. Additional Lightmatter employment opportunities across product, R&D and engineering are available, the company notes.
Lightmatter’s Total Funding to Date, Beta Testing Plan
With this round, Lightmatter has raised more than $270 million to date. Lightmatter’s technology is now in beta, and mass production is planned for 2024, according to TechCrunch.