
Based on 10-years of research and collaboration between MIT, UC Berkeley, and CU Boulder, and funding from DARPA via the POEM program, Ayar Labs created a solution that overcomes the power/performance scaling challenges of semiconductors as well as the interconnect bandwidth bottleneck between those devices.
Ayar Labs announced the completion of a $35M Series B financing co-led by Downing Ventures and BlueSky Capital. New investors include Applied Ventures, LLC, Castor Ventures, Downing Ventures (U.K.), and SGInnovate (Singapore), expanding Ayar Labs’ investor base with strategic ecosystem and global investors. Existing investor participation includes BlueSky Capital, Founders Fund, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Intel Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, and Playground Global.
With the new investment, Ayar Labs aims to accelerate product development and commercialization of its in-package optical interconnect (I/O) solution, as well as grow the company’s footprint internationally. Optical I/O (OIO) solves the major computing bottlenecks in interconnect bandwidth, power consumption, and reach. Removing these bottlenecks enables new system architectures that can bring improvements in power, performance, area, and cost beyond the limits of traditional Moore’s Law scaling in important applications such as artificial intelligence, high performance computing, cloud, telecommunications, and aerospace.