About Arago
Arago is a Paris startup designing a processor for AI workloads that does part of its computation with light instead of electrical signals. Light generates less heat than current in transistors, and the company says this could cut energy use per task. Its first chip, codenamed JEF, is meant to run models written in standard AI software frameworks. Arago was founded in 2024 by Nicolas Muller, Eliott Sarrey and Ambroise Muller, and in July 2025 it closed a seed round co-led by Earlybird, Protagonist and Visionaries Tomorrow.
Arago was founded in 2024 and is based in Paris, France. It is listed under Photonic Computing, AI Accelerators. Reported funding is $26M seed (Jul 2025).
Compute Technologies
- Photonics
- AI Accelerators
What Arago works on
Photonic Computing
Photonic computing uses light instead of electricity to carry or process information. Photons have no charge, so light in a waveguide does not cause the resistive heating that current in a wire does, though lasers and modulators still use power, and many wavelengths can share one waveguide. The industry has two quite different parts: moving data with light, and computing with light.
AI Accelerators
An AI accelerator is a chip, or a part of a chip, designed to run machine learning faster or with less energy than a general-purpose processor. The category includes GPUs, TPUs, neural processing units (NPUs) and chips from many startups.
Also in France
LightOn, UPMEM, GreenWaves Technologies, Scintil Photonics, Thales Group
