Oxford photonics startup Salience Labs raises $125M to link thousands of GPUs with light. October 15, 2026 * Bullhound leads the $125M Series B; AMD Ventures and Intel Capital join. * Salience showed a 64-port all-optical switch at ECOC 2026; 128- and 256-port systems are next. * Cignal AI sees the optical circuit switching market passing $8B by 2030. Salience Labs, a photonic chip startup based in Milton, Oxfordshire, has closed an oversubscribed $125 million Series B led by Bullhound Capital. AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank also took part. Existing shareholders Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures followed on. The money will go toward volume manufacturing, the 128- and 256-port versions of its switch, and a second West Coast office in Silicon Valley. Salience was founded in 2021 and builds on more than a decade of research at the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in Germany. Switching light without turning it into electricity. Kewada holds undergraduate and master's degrees in physics from Imperial College London and previously worked at McKinsey & Company before becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Oxford Science Enterprises, where she helped bring together research from Oxford and the University of Münster to commercialise photonic technology. Feldmann, a physicist specialising in photonics, helped develop and test the company's early prototype. Their combined commercial and research expertise underpins Salience Labs' ambition to use light-based switching to deliver faster, lower-latency connectivity for AI data centres. A conventional network switch converts an optical signal into an electrical one to route it, then converts it back. Optical circuit switching (OCS) skips that step and sets up a path for the light itself. Salience says its all-optical, fully integrated architecture is built to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks in scale-up AI networks. The company showed a 64-port version live at ECOC 2026, which it calls an industry first for silicon photonics OCS. TA 32-port version, validated by Keysight, came before it. Salience says it will keep working with Keysight Technologies and Tower Semiconductor to scale manufacturing. "OCS will play a critical role in AI data centre networking. As customers roll out optical links in their data centers, they need high-performance optical switches to deliver the token economics workloads demand. Salience Labs has demonstrated a market-leading technology: a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well to high-volume manufacturing," said Vaysh Kewada, CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs. Scaling optical switching for AI. The demand case rests on how AI clusters are being built. Dell'Oro Group forecasts that cumulative spending on datacenter switches in AI back-end networks will approach $1 trillion between 2026 and 2030, with scale-up taking more than half of it by 2030. Cignal AI expects the OCS market to exceed $8 billion by 2030. Scale-up networks link accelerators inside a rack or pod, so they behave like one machine. That is where AMD says its focus is moving. "AI infrastructure is increasingly being designed at rack scale, where networking has a direct impact on system performance, efficiency and economics. Salience Labs is developing a differentiated, integrated optical switching architecture aimed at addressing these challenges, and AMD Ventures is pleased to support the team as it scales its technology and manufacturing capabilities," said Patrick Rundell, director at AMD Ventures. Intel Capital pointed to the chip design itself. "Photonics is quickly becoming essential to scaling AI infrastructure, and optical circuit switching can unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency," added Srini Ananth, managing director at Intel Capital. Strategic money is spreading across the optical stack. Salience is the latest of several photonics startups to land large rounds from chipmakers, and investors aren't picking a single winner. AMD also backs Ayar Labs, which raised $500 million in a Series E at a $3.8 billion valuation, according to SDxCentral. Lightmatter raised $400 million at a $4.4 billion valuation. CScale, which emerged from stealth with $145 million, counts Intel and Nvidia among its backers. Each targets a different layer: optical I/O, photonic interconnects or switching. The shared thesis is that moving data, not computing it, limits AI clusters. In the UK, Oriole Networks has raised about $35 million in total and is deploying OCS in a government lab alongside AMD chips. The UK angle matters too. The British Business Bank's presence, alongside Oxford Science Enterprises and Cambridge Innovation Capital, shows state-linked and university capital staying with a UK deep-tech company into its growth stage, a pattern also seen at Universal Quantum. TFN has tracked Nvidia's investment activity in AI infrastructure in its coverage of its European backing.

Oxford's Salience Labs raises £94m to build AI data centre tech. Photonic solutions firm was founded in 2021 and backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford and University of Münster Listen to article Salience Labs has raised $125 million (£94m) to build connectivity infrastructure for AI data centres. The photonic solutions firm was founded in 2021 and backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in Germany. Its innovative developments in photonic switching technology enable high-speed, ultra-low latency networking fabrics that remove infrastructure bottlenecks for AI workloads. The Series B funding round was led by Bullhound Capital, with principal Callum Stewart joining the board of directors. AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and British Business Bank joined the round, alongside continued support from existing shareholders including Applied Ventures LLC, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures. Salience Labs will accelerate the deployment of its optical circuit switching technology, scale its volume manufacturing operations and expand its US presence in Silicon Valley. "OCS will play a critical role in AI data centre networking," said Vaysh Kewada (pictured), CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs. "As customers roll out optical links in their datacenters, high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver the token economics that workloads demand. "Salience Labs has demonstrated a market-leading technology: a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well to high-volume manufacturing." The all-optical switch architecture is purpose-built to be deployed at scale to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks for optimal scale-up network performance, it says. "The investor base and customer relationships Salience Labs has developed really speak to the capability of the leadership," said Stewart. "Vaysh has assembled a strong team fully focused on designing a switch architecture that both aligns with customers' near-term roadmaps but also scales with them far into the future." Salience is now expanding its global footprint and will open a second West Coast location. "AI infrastructure is increasingly being designed at rack scale, where networking has a direct impact on system performance, efficiency and economics," said Patrick Rundell, director, AMD Ventures. "Salience Labs is developing a differentiated, integrated optical switching architecture aimed at addressing these challenges, and AMD Ventures is pleased to support the team as it scales its technology and manufacturing capabilities." Srini Ananth, managing director at Intel Capital, added: "Photonics is quickly becoming essential to scaling AI infrastructure, and optical circuit switching can unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency. "Salience Labs stands out through its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification, addressing key challenges to deploying optical switching at scale."

Salience Labs secures $125M Series B for optical tech. This post contains affiliate links, and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links, at no cost to you. Salience Labs has officially secured a massive oversubscribed $125 million Series B funding round led by Bullhound Capital. This monumental financial injection highlights the rapid acceleration of photonics and advanced optical infrastructure within the global technology sector. The Oxfordshire-based innovator plans to utilize these fresh funds to scale its manufacturing operations and expand its physical footprint. For more insights on breakthroughs in this field, check out its latest optics articles to stay fully informed on market trends. Table of Contents The rise of optical circuit switching technology. Founded back in 2021, Salience Labs builds upon over ten years of collaborative research originating from the University of Oxford and the University of Munster. Their core engineering philosophy centers on revolutionary optical circuit switching technology that keeps light fundamentally as light. By avoiding the traditional inefficiencies of converting optical signals into electrical forms and back again, they achieve unprecedented data speeds. If you enjoy exploring how light behaves in various instruments, you might also appreciate looking into modern telescopes and their precision glass elements. Scaling hardware and expanding global reach. The company recently showcased an impressive 64-port all-optical switch that neatly fits inside a standard 1U rack box. Newly acquired capital will directly help finance the upcoming development of advanced 128-port and 256-port switch architectures moving forward. To support this hardware scaling, the startup is establishing a second West Coast office located strategically in California. This US expansion mirrors broader industry growth seen across various equipment categories, including high-performance spotting scopes used in field applications. Market competition and the trillion-dollar AI boom. Salience Labs certainly does not operate in a vacuum and faces formidable market competition from rivals like Oriole Networks and Lumilens. These competing firms have also successfully attracted substantial venture funding and early commercial deployments. This fierce market race is primarily driven by staggering projections regarding future artificial intelligence infrastructure demands. Analysts estimate that cumulative AI back-end network switch spending could realistically approach a staggering $1 trillion between 2026 and 2030. Strategic backing and future outlook. Despite receiving notable backing from the British state through the British Business Bank, the startup's current strategy emphasizes a major international footprint. Additional participants in this massive funding round include tech giants like AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, and SBI Group. As photonics continues to reshape modern computing architectures, optical networking components will remain at the very cutting edge of innovation. Whether examining microscopic data paths or massive enterprise server switches, the future of global connectivity relies entirely on mastering light. Additional Reading: