Celestial AI raises $250m in Series C1 funding

Celestial AI has secured $250m in its Series C1 funding round to enhance its Photonic Fabric technology for AI infrastructure. 

The latest funding round, spearheaded by Fidelity Management & Research Company, brings the total capital raised by the company to more than $515m.

New investors in the round include funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Maverick Silicon, Tiger Global Management and Lip-Bu Tan.

Existing investors such as AMD Ventures, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Porsche Automobil Holding SE, Temasek, the Engine Ventures and Xora Innovation also participated in the funding.

Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is an optical interconnect technology platform designed for AI computing systems. It powers data centre computing, networking and memory systems, supporting advancements in AI.

Celestial AI CEO David Lazovsky said: “Cluster sizes must scale from a few AI processors in a server to tens of processors in a single rack and thousands of processors across multiple racks, all while relying on high-bandwidth, low-latency network connectivity to handle massive data transfers between processors.

“Celestial AI’s Photonic Fabric is the only technology platform capable of meeting these critical demands while setting new standards for bandwidth, latency, energy efficiency and total cost of ownership.”

With the latest proceeds, Celestial AI plans to broaden and qualify its volume manufacturing supply chain to meet growing customer demand.

BlackRock Fundamental Equities Technology Group head Tony Kim said: “Amid the explosive growth of Artificial Intelligence, Celestial AI is uniquely positioned to meet the soaring demands of data centre infrastructure with its disruptive Photonic Fabric technology.”

Maverick Silicon managing partner Andrew Homan said: “By providing terabytes of low-latency bandwidth and in-network computing, as well as in-network high-speed, high-capacity memory, Photonic Fabric enables the next generation of AI infrastructure, drawing upon the company’s rich IP [intellectual property] in optical interconnect within chip, within package and between package-to-package.”

The Photonic Fabric technology is fully compatible with industry-standard manufacturing and 2.5D packaging processes, Celestial AI said.

This compatibility ensures that Celestial AI’s solutions can be integrated smoothly into existing systems.

This paves the way for widespread adoption and technological advancement in the field of AI infrastructure.