Salience Labs, a UK company that makes photonic chips (chips that use light instead of electricity) for AI data-centre networks, has raised what it calls an “oversubscribed $125 million Series B” funding round. Bullhound Capital led the round, and Bullhound principal Callum Stewart joins Salience’s board. The company announced the round on 14 October 2026 and did not disclose a valuation.
AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank also invested. Existing backers including Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures took part too.
What optical circuit switching is
Large AI systems connect thousands of graphics processors (GPUs), and moving data between them is a growing bottleneck. Most network switches convert light signals from fibre-optic cables into electrical signals, route them, then turn them back into light.
An optical circuit switch (OCS) skips that conversion. It sets up a direct light path between two points and keeps the data travelling as light. Salience says its switch is “all-optical” and fully integrated on a chip, and is designed to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple server racks.
What the money is for
Salience says it will use the funding to deploy its OCS technology more widely, scale up volume manufacturing and expand in Silicon Valley, where it plans a second West Coast office. It says the money will also support future 128-port and 256-port switches.
The round follows what the company describes as a live demonstration of its 64-port all-optical photonic switch at the ECOC 2026 conference. Salience calls this “an industry first for silicon photonics OCS”. That is the company’s own claim.
“OCS will play a critical role in AI datacenter networking,” said Vaysh Kewada, Salience’s CEO and co-founder. “As customers roll out optical links in their datacenters, high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver the token economics that workloads demand.”
Srini Ananth, managing director at Intel Capital, said: “Photonics is quickly becoming essential to scaling AI infrastructure, and optical circuit switching can unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency.”
Salience was founded in 2021, building on research from the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in Germany, according to the company.
What this means
- Chip giants are backing optical networking. AMD’s and Intel’s venture arms both invested.
- The claims are still the company’s own. Salience has not published performance numbers or named customers.
- Networking is now an AI bottleneck. Investors are funding ways to move data faster between AI chips.
Sources
- Salience Labs, “Salience Labs Secures $125 Million in Series B Funding to Scale Photonic Networking Chips for AI Datacenter Infrastructure”, press release via Business Wire, 14 October 2026. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261014617850/en/
