Salience Labs Raises $125M for Optical AI Switches to Eliminate Data Center Bottlenecks

Salience Labs Secures $125M to Scale Optical Switching Technology

Salience Labs closed an oversubscribed $125M Series B funding round led by Bullhound Capital, with participation from AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank1

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. The Oxfordshire-based company, founded in 2021, will direct the capital toward volume manufacturing, geographic expansion including a second West Coast office in California, and development of higher-density optical switches1

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. Existing investors Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures returned for this round2

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All-Optical Circuit-Switching Technology Addresses AI Infrastructure Bottlenecks

Salience Labs has developed all-optical circuit-switching technology built on silicon photonics-based architecture, drawing from over a decade of research at the University of Oxford and the University of Munster1

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. Traditional data center switches convert optical signals to electrical form for routing, then back to optical, creating significant networking bottlenecks in AI data centers1

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. CEO and co-founder Vaysh Kewada explains that legacy fabrics cannot keep pace with massive throughput demands from GPU clusters comprising tens of thousands of accelerators, resulting in latency bottlenecks and escalating power consumption2

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. The company's optical AI switches keep light as light, establishing a direct path for signals without electrical conversion, dynamically routing information on-chip to reduce latency and power consumption while enabling companies to scale GPU clusters to hundreds of thousands of chips1

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Company Demonstrates 64-Port All-Optical Photonic Switch at ECOC 2026 Conference

At the ECOC 2026 conference in September, Salience Labs showcased the world's first 64-port all-optical photonic switch, following the launch of a 32-port version validated by Keysight earlier in the spring1

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. The unit fits a standard 1U box configuration1

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. The company now has 128-port and 256-port switches under development, though no deployment dates have been disclosed1

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. These higher-density configurations will support scale-up and scale-out network fabrics across data-intensive environments2

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. Intel Capital's Srini Ananth noted that "Salience Labs stands out through its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification, addressing key challenges to deploying optical switching at scale"2

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Massive Market Opportunity Attracts Chipmaker Investment

Cignal AI forecasts the optical circuit switching market to exceed $8 billion by the end of the decade2

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. Dell'Oro expects cumulative spending on switches in AI back-end networks to approach $1 trillion across 2026 to 2030, with more than half directed toward scale-up infrastructure1

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. The participation of AMD Ventures and Intel Capital signals recognition from major chipmakers that photonics will become omnipresent in modern AI data centers2

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. AMD's MI500 GPU roadmap supports both copper and optical links extending into 20271

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. British rival Oriole Networks is already deploying its optical circuit switching platform in the UK government's £50M ARIA lab alongside AMD chips, having raised approximately $35M total1

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. Competitor Lumilens emerged from stealth in August with over $700M at a $5.51 billion valuation, already shipping into hyperscaler data centers1

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. Salience Labs already maintains an engineering team in California, and CEO Kewada splits her time between locations1

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. No customer names, deployment dates or qualification timelines have been announced1

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