About Lightmatter
Lightmatter develops photonic interconnect technology for AI data centers, using light rather than electrical signals to move data between chips. Its Passage product line includes the M1000, a photonic interposer, and the L200 and L200X, co-packaged optics engines. The M1000 is built on the GlobalFoundries Fotonix silicon photonics platform, and the L200 was developed with Alphawave Semi. Lightmatter is a privately held company whose products target the bandwidth limits that arise when connecting large numbers of GPUs and other accelerators.
Lightmatter was founded in 2017 and is based in Boston, MA, United States. It is listed under Photonic Computing, Interconnect & Networking. Reported funding is $400M Series D at $4.4B valuation (Oct 2024).
Compute Technologies
- Photonics
What Lightmatter 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
