Salience Labs, a photonic chip company focused on connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure, announced on October 14, 2026 that it has completed an oversubscribed US$125 million Series B funding round. Bullhound Capital led the investment, and Principal Callum Stewart will join the Salience Labs Board of Directors. Additional participants included AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading, the British Business Bank, and existing shareholders such as Applied Ventures and Oxford Science Enterprises.
Funding to Accelerate Optical Circuit Switching
The new capital will accelerate the deployment of Salience Labs' optical circuit switching (OCS) technology and support the scaling of its volume manufacturing operations. The company also plans to expand its U.S. presence in Silicon Valley. Its fully integrated, all-optical switch architecture is designed to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks for scale-up network performance.
CEO Highlights Demand for Optical Switches
CEO and co-founder Vaysh Kewada said OCS will play a critical role in AI datacenter networking. He explained that as customers roll out optical links, high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver the token economics that workloads demand. Kewada added that support from AMD Ventures and Intel Capital will accelerate growth into high-volume production and world-leading AI datacenter performance.
Investors Point to Rack Scale Economics
Bullhound Capital Principal Callum Stewart said the company's investor base and customer relationships reflect the strength of its leadership team. AMD Ventures Director Patrick Rundell noted that AI infrastructure is increasingly designed at rack scale, where networking directly affects system performance, efficiency, and economics. Intel Capital Managing Director Srini Ananth said photonics is quickly becoming essential to scaling AI infrastructure and that Salience Labs stands out through its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification.
Live Demonstration and Future Ports
The financing follows Salience Labs' live demonstration of its 64-port all-optical photonic switch at ECOC 2026, which the company described as an industry first for silicon photonics OCS. The funding will help enable future solutions including 128-port and 256-port OCS. These additions are intended to unlock new use cases across data-intensive and performance-critical environments.
Market Forecast and Expansion Plans
Dell'Oro Group forecasts that cumulative spending on datacenter switches deployed in AI back-end networks will approach US$1 trillion over the next five years from 2026 to 2030. Scale-up is projected to account for more than half of the market by 2030. Salience Labs also targets global expansion into new geographic markets and will continue working with Keysight Technologies and Tower Semiconductor to scale high-volume manufacturing.
Silicon Valley Growth and Team Building
The company will build out its Silicon Valley offices and open a second West Coast location. This broader market presence is intended to position Salience Labs for growing demand in high-performance connectivity solutions for AI datacenters. The team is actively seeking new members as part of its office expansions and long-term engineering goals.
Salience Labs' technology is the result of more than 10 years of research in silicon photonics. The company is working to transform the networking layer of datacenter infrastructure and capitalize on the rapid growth of AI networks. With fresh funding, strategic investor support, and a defined product roadmap, Salience Labs is positioned to expand its role in optical infrastructure.