Salience Labs raises $125M to scale performance in AI data centers

Salience Labs, a UK-based startup that develops silicon photonics and optical circuit switching (OCS) technology to speed up data center connectivity for AI workloads, has announced the successful completion of an oversubscribed USD 125 million Series B funding round. 

The round was led by Bullhound Capital, with Principal Callum Stewart joining the Salience Labs Board of Directors. Additional investor participation came from AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and British Business Bank, as well as continued support from existing shareholders including Applied Ventures LLC, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures, Salience Labs said.

With this new funding, Salience Labs will accelerate the deployment of its optical circuit switching (OCS) technology, scale its volume manufacturing operations and expand its U.S. presence in Silicon Valley.   

“Salience Labs has demonstrated a market-leading technology: a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well to high-volume manufacturing,” said Vaysh Kewada, CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs. “This funding, alongside the support of our investors AMD Ventures and Intel Capital, will accelerate our growth into high-volume production to enable world-leading performance in AI data centers.” 

Salience Labs’ all-optical, fully integrated switch architecture is purpose-built to be deployed at scale to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks for optimal scale-up network performance in AI data centers, the company said.

“The investor base and customer relationships Salience Labs has developed really speak to the capability of the leadership: Vaysh has assembled a strong team fully focused on designing a switch architecture that both aligns with customers’ near-term roadmaps but also scales with them far into the future,” said Bullhound Capital Principal Callum Stewart.

“AI infrastructure is increasingly being designed at rack scale, where networking has a direct impact on system performance, efficiency and economics,” said Patrick Rundell, Director, AMD Ventures. “Salience Labs is developing a differentiated, integrated optical switching architecture aimed at addressing these challenges, and AMD Ventures is pleased to support the team as it scales its technology and manufacturing capabilities.” 

Srini Ananth, Managing Director at Intel Capital, said that Salience Labs stood out through its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification, addressing key challenges to deploying optical switching at scale.