OpenLight Secures Fresh Capital as Demand Rises for Silicon Photonics Solutions
Series A-1 funding will accelerate product development, global expansion and customer adoption across high-growth semiconductor markets
OpenLight, the world leader in custom Photonic Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (PASIC) design leveraging its patented heterogeneous silicon photonics process, announced it has raised an additional $50 million in a Series A-1 round, bringing the company’s total funding to $84 million. The financing reflects growing commercial momentum and accelerating customer adoption across AI infrastructure, automotive and industrial sensing, medical and quantum computing applications.
The oversubscribed round was led by Matter Venture Partners, with participation from new investors, Acclimate Ventures and Catapult Ventures, alongside existing investors, Xora Innovation, Capricorn Investment Group, Mayfield, and New Legacy.
“We at Matter Venture Partners are excited to lead this OpenLight investment round. Optical technology is critical to the future scaling of data centres and AI infrastructure. We believe OpenLight’s heterogeneous integrated silicon photonics platform will be the core ingredient to this worldwide global expansion of optical connectivity where power and bandwidth matter,” said Wen Hsieh, Founding Managing Partner at Matter Venture Partners.
OpenLight’s process design kit (PDK), built on the heterogeneous integration of indium phosphide and silicon photonics, provides customers with a comprehensive library of passive and active components — including integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers, and detectors. Validated at leading photonics foundry Tower Semiconductor, its PDK ensures designs are production-ready from day one.
Using these proven building blocks, customers can develop custom PASICs that simplify advanced chip design and accelerate time to market. Today, more than 25 companies use the OpenLight PDK to design and fabricate PASICs across a broad range of applications. OpenLight holds over 410 patents covering its PDK and the manufacturing of heterogeneously integrated III-V photonics.
“We are excited to have Wen Hsieh and the Matter Venture Partners team as part of OpenLight investors. Their connection to the semiconductor ecosystem will be a key asset as we scale our technology and customer base. The strong interest from leaders across the semiconductor industry underscores the momentum behind OpenLight’s technology and vision,” said Adam Carter, President and CEO of OpenLight. “This oversubscribed funding round adds highly sophisticated investor partners who will enable us to accelerate our strategic roadmap, expand worldwide sales and technical support, and bring heterogeneous photonic integrated circuits to global markets at scale.”
The new funding will further accelerate the expansion of OpenLight’s PDK library of active and passive photonics components — including its leading-edge 400G modulator and indium phosphide heterogeneously integrated on-chip laser technology. The company will also ramp up development of standards-based reference photonic integrated circuits (PICs) at 1.6T and 3.2T, delivering the industry’s most flexible and advanced component design libraries.
