Celestial AI, a company specializing in optical interconnect technology designed for modern AI infrastructure, has secured $255 million in a Series C1 funding round. The round included strategic investments from VentureTech Alliance and Samsung Catalyst Fund, bringing the company’s total funding to $520 million.

The new capital will be used to accelerate the commercialization of its Photonic Fabric technology, a system engineered to move data optically between processors and servers, addressing the growing performance and energy challenges of AI-scale workloads.

Now that $520 million has been raised, Celestial AI is getting ready to expand the commercial use of its Photonic Fabric with the goal of raising the bar for AI infrastructure performance worldwide.

The new funding comes at a time of unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure, as enterprises and hyperscalers race to expand computing capacity. Traditional copper-based interconnects, long used to transfer data between processors, are increasingly seen as bottlenecks due to their bandwidth limitations and higher power requirements. 

Celestial AI argues that next-generation AI, which relies on millions of processors, requires a fundamental shift to optical interconnects that deliver high bandwidth, low latency, and improved energy efficiency. The company’s Photonic Fabric platform is designed to enable optical data transport from chip-to-chip within processor packages to server-to-server across racks, promising to unlock scalability and reduce power constraints for AI data centers.

Chief Executive Officer David Lazovsky highlighted the urgency of the transition, noting that copper interconnects are no longer sufficient to support the data movement required by advanced AI models. He positioned Photonic Fabric as a generational leap in infrastructure, capable of supporting the industry’s shift toward ultra-fast, power-efficient systems. The latest funding will also help strengthen Celestial AI’s supply chain for volume manufacturing, expand production capacity, and deepen partnerships with foundries, including TSMC.

Semiconductor Ecosystem

The round attracted participation from an array of existing investors such as AMD Ventures, IMEC XPand, Penguin Solutions, and Fidelity Management & Research Company, alongside major backers including BlackRock, Tiger Global, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Temasek, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE.

VentureTech Alliance, a new strategic investor in this round, emphasized the critical role of optical interconnects in meeting the scalability and sustainability demands of AI infrastructure. Managing partner Kai Tsang described the technology as the necessary shift for the semiconductor ecosystem, reducing power consumption while enabling processor scaling at levels not possible with electrical interconnects.

Celestial AI’s growing investor base would reflect the strategic importance of optical interconnects in the future of computing. As AI models grow larger and workloads more complex, data centers face mounting challenges around bandwidth, latency, and energy efficiency. The company is positioning itself at the center of this transition, with technology that could become foundational for hyperscalers and enterprises deploying large-scale AI systems. 

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