Optical networking startup Lumilens launches with $900M in funding
Lumilens launched with $900M, including a $700M Series C at a $5.51B valuation co-led by Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech, Seligman Ventures and Spark Capital, with Qualcomm joining. Founder Ankur Singla — who sold Contrail Systems and Volterra for a combined $676M — claims billions of dollars in chip orders for optics that replace copper links between GPUs. Singla puts large-scale co-packaged optics volume two to three years out, so the order book runs ahead of the shipping technology, with near-packaged optics on the motherboard as the interim path.
Source: siliconangle.com ↗
We believe that we're still about two to three years away when it comes to large-scale volume deployment of co-packaged optics and the interim solution is near-packaged optics.
Why this matters
- → Optical interconnects could halve GPU cluster latency, unlocking AI model scaling beyond current limits
- → Early order book ($900M valuation, billions in pre-orders) signals datacenter operators are ready to abandon c
- → Two-to-three-year timeline means the infrastructure bet is locking in now while chips still mature