OpenLight, a Santa Clara-based silicon photonics foundry, has raised $50 million in Series A-1 funding from investors including Matter Venture Partners and Wen H. Hsieh, Ph.D. The company offers the world's first open silicon photonics platform with integrated lasers, enabling custom Photonic Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (PASICs) via PDK design. The capital will accelerate global deployment, expand the PDK library, and ramp production of 1.6T and 3.2T PICs.
AI Boom Drives Photonics Investments
The round follows a $34M oversubscribed Series A in August 2025 co-led by Xora Innovation and Capricorn Investment Group, bringing total funding to $84M per Semiconductor Today. It arrives amid surging demand for high-speed optics in AI data centers, where capex rose 51% to $455B in 2024 according to SDxCentral. Competitor Ayar Labs closed a $500M Series E in March 2026 at a $3.75B valuation. OpenLight's open PDK model targets custom designs underserved by proprietary chiplet approaches.
Bandwidth Crunch Hits Data Centers
Exploding AI workloads demand terabit-scale interconnects, but copper links waste power and limit speeds beyond 800G. Traditional external lasers add assembly complexity and cost. Silicon photonics market stands at $2.65B in 2025, projected to reach $9.65B by 2030 at 29.5% CAGR per Yahoo Finance. Hyperscalers seek co-packaged optics (CPO) to cut latency and energy use in racks.
Integrated Lasers Unlock Scalable PICs
OpenLight's PH18DA platform integrates III-V lasers on silicon via heterogeneous bonding, achieving over 90% coupling efficiency without external optics per company site. This enables scalable PICs from 400G to 3.2T DR8 per chip. The open PDK, validated at Tower Semiconductor, is trusted by more than 25 companies for production PASICs per press releases. Unlike pluggable-focused rivals, OpenLight guarantees full design-to-production.
Open Ecosystem Speeds Custom Designs
Customers use OpenLight's PDK for rapid PASIC development in datacom, AI, and HPC. Recent milestones include first volume production orders for 800G/1.6T laser-integrated PICs from NewPhotonics and 3.2T DR8 prototypes sampled to transceiver makers per recent announcements. Partnerships with Tower Semiconductor and Suzhou TFC streamline manufacturing.
As Adam Carter, President and CEO, noted:
"This oversubscribed funding round adds highly sophisticated investor partners who will enable us to accelerate our strategic roadmap."
Strategic Investors Signal Validation
The Series A-1 includes Matter Venture Partners, whose participation underscores momentum in AI photonics per company post. Prior backers like Juniper Networks provide strategic continuity from OpenLight's Aurrion roots. This mix blends growth capital with domain expertise for ecosystem expansion.
Photonics Market Scales to $10B
Silicon photonics grows at 25% CAGR from a $3.6B base, driven by AI-driven CPO adoption per Coherent Market Insights. SCINTIL Photonics raised $76M for hybrid lasers, while Xscape Photonics secured $81M for multi-wavelength engines. Dust Photonics, acquired by Credo for $1.3B, targeted pluggables with $100M+ prior funding. OpenLight's foundry model captures custom ASIC demand.
Ex-Juniper Team Drives Continuity
Leadership hails from Juniper's silicon photonics group, including Volkan Kaman, who led engineering at Aurrion (acquired by Juniper in 2016), providing direct tech transfer per leadership page. Multiple UCSB PhDs bolster PIC design expertise. Recent sales hires like Tamara Heath-Underbrink, ex-Infineon VP who grew revenue from $630M to $1B, aid commercialization.
Production Ramps Fuel Expansion
OpenLight eyes PDK library growth and 1.6T/3.2T PIC ramps, backed by volume orders and hiring in PIC engineering and test roles per recent activity. OFC 2026 demos highlighted ecosystem progress with partners.