Salience Labs, an Oxford chip startup, raised $125m in a Series B led by Bullhound Capital that included AMD Ventures and Intel Capital. City AM reports the switches could reduce power consumption but gives no measured figure.
Perspective Coverage
7 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 39%
- Operator
- Operator 21%
- Investor
- Investor 40%
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives65
- Confidence72
Xanadu is moving its photon detectors onto GlobalFoundries' 300mm line in New York
Xanadu will move its photon-counting detectors and silicon nitride photonics onto GlobalFoundries' 300mm line in Malta, New York, under a multi-year deal. Its scaling case now depends on how chips from a commercial fab perform.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives70
- Confidence35
buildOne report1 publisher Tower's $4 billion optical-chip build-out in Japan starts inside an already-qualified fab
Tower Semiconductor and Japan will co-invest $4 billion to reach 45,000 300mm-equivalent wafers a month of optical-connectivity capacity by 2029. Until the new fab lands in 2029, growth comes from adding tools to a fab that already ships.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption50
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives55
- Confidence40
Photonics aims at 20 of the 400 tonnes of copper inside a 100MW data centre
Operators are betting light replaces copper between the chips inside a data centre. Whether it does turns on hall temperature and cable routing as much as on an optical cost curve that is still expensive.
Reality
- Evidence46
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives80
- Confidence50
Marvell paid $3.25bn for silicon photonics maker Celestial AI to target market KeyBanc sees hitting $20bn by 2030
KeyBanc's optical thesis for Marvell and Marvell's own revenue guidance both land near $30 billion, four years apart and measuring different things. The purchase price for the technology is already committed.
Reality
- Evidence32
- Adoption45
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives62
- Confidence36
Kyocera anneals an optical isolator onto a silicon waveguide with a 700-micrometer laser spot
Kyocera and Tohoku University report 13.6 decibels of isolation on a silicon waveguide, roughly a 95 percent cut in reflected light, from garnet crystallised by a laser aimed at one small patch. Lower loss and mass production are still on their list.
Reality
- Evidence48
- Adoption8
- Hype gap+28
- Incentives58
- Confidence55
Laser pulses retune EPFL's suspended silicon metasurfaces in nanoseconds
In Nature Communications, Hatice Altug's EPFL group tunes one metasurface two ways: on-chip microheaters running at kilohertz rates, and ultrafast laser pulses running about a million times faster, a route that needs an external laser.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives70
- Confidence55
Nvidia now carries $99bn of its own customers on its balance sheet
The book grew from about $7bn in a year, and roughly half of it is priced by funding rounds rather than by markets, which means a demand forecast built on customer orders is partly a forecast of Nvidia's own marks.
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption76
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives72
- Confidence64
UIUC's quasi-periodic photonic crystal lased single-mode at room temperature at 1.5 microns
The demonstration is photopumped, so nobody is specifying it into a lidar module yet. The buried silicon dioxide pattern it lases through is the part that could let one wafer carry several photonic-crystal designs.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives58
- Confidence52
Deuterated silicon nitride on 8-inch wafers puts a broadband light source inside the fab
A Singapore team swapped hydrogen for deuterium in silicon nitride, cut loss to 0.54 dB per centimeter, and spanned 1.7 octaves. The sub-400 C process is the part fabs will care about.
Reality
- Evidence66
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives55
- Confidence60
buildOne report1 publisher The optical interconnect bill: $144B by 2030, and 63.7% of it is silicon photonics
A forecast filed with a Hong Kong IPO puts data center optics at $144.4 billion in 2030, and the $15 billion already spent means rack decisions made now are bets on a moving roadmap.
Reality
- Evidence34
- Adoption32
- Hype gap+38
- Incentives82
- Confidence45