Salience Labs raises $125M for optical AI switches, then expands in California

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Salience Labs has raised an oversubscribed $125M Series B led by Bullhound Capital, with AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and the British Business Bank taking part. The Oxfordshire company will use it to scale manufacturing and open a second West Coast office.

An Oxfordshire photonics company has raised $125M to build optical switches for AI data centres. The research is British and German, part of the money is British state money, and the expansion is in California.

Bullhound Capital led the oversubscribed round, with AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank joining, the company said.

Salience Labs was founded in 2021 and sits in Milton, Oxfordshire. It is built on more than a decade of research at the University of Oxford and the University of Munster.

Its product keeps light as light. A conventional switch converts an optical signal to electrical form to...

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