Neurophos Raises $110M Series A to Accelerate Photonic AI Chips

Neurophos, a U.S.-based company specializing in photonic AI inference chips, has raised $110 million in an oversubscribed Series A round, bringing its total funding to $118 million.

The round was led by Gates Frontier, with participation from Aramco Ventures, M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), Carbon Direct Capital, Bosch Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, Space Capital, and other investors.

As AI adoption accelerates, data centers face mounting constraints around power consumption and scalability. Neurophos addresses these challenges through its proprietary Optical Processing Unit (OPU), integrating over one million micron-scale optical processing elements on a single chip.

The company claims its technology delivers up to 100x higher performance and energy efficiency compared to leading silicon-based chips, offering a drop-in alternative to GPUs in data centers.

The company’s core breakthrough lies in micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators, achieving 10,000x miniaturization over previous photonic elements and enabling large-scale manufacturable photonic computing for the first time.

The newly raised capital will accelerate delivery of Neurophos’ first integrated photonic compute system, including datacenter-ready OPU modules, a full software stack, and early-access developer hardware, alongside expansion of its operations in Austin and San Francisco.