About Lightelligence
Lightelligence develops photonic products for AI systems, with two segments, optical interconnect and optical computing. Optical interconnect, which links chips using light, produces its current revenue, while optical computing, which does calculations with light, is a longer-term effort. Yichen Shen, who holds a physics PhD from MIT, founded the company in 2017. It listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange on 28 April 2026 under the code 1879, and filings name Shanghai Xizhi Technology as the operating company.
Lightelligence was founded in 2017 and is based in Boston, MA, United States. It is listed under Photonic Computing, Interconnect & Networking. Reported funding is $210M+ Series C (2025); HKEX IPO April 2026 raised ~$322M.
Compute Technologies
- Photonics
What Lightelligence 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.
Interconnect & Networking
Interconnect is the set of links that move data between chips, between boards and between racks. It includes wires on a package, cables inside a server, and the network switches and optical fibre across a data center. A processor is only as useful as the speed at which it can get data in and out.
Also in United States
Celestial AI, Lightwave Logic, Lumentum, GlobalFoundries, Applied Optoelectronics
