MediaTek and the venture arm of Bosch were among those backing Eridu, a startup developing network switches for intense AI workloads that has just emerged from stealth.

Founded by former Infinera co-founder and CTO Drew Perkins, Eridu joins a growing number of emerging players looking to shake up the network switch space. Its hardware encompasses both backend scale-out (cluster-to-cluster interconnectivity) and scale-up networks (inside the cabinet).

A company spokesperson told SDxCentral that its frontier network switch can support scale-out backend networks of more than 10,000 GPUs under a single tier of switches, expanding to millions of GPUs across two tiers – eliminating the need for a third switching tier entirely. For scale-up, the switch supports thousands of GPUs under a single tier, delivering tens-of-terabits per-second per-GPU.

The practical impact of the startup’s switches varies depending on an operator’s related architecture.

For example, the spokesperson said one hyperscaler Eridu is in discussions with currently maxes out its scale unit at around 500 GPUs using “today's best available switches” in a multiplane, rail-aligned configuration. With Eridu's solution, the spokesperson said that same operator could scale into the thousands of GPUs per tier. Exact figures do, however, depend on architectural choices related to topology, breakout speeds, and network design.

The switch's capacity may also open up front-end network applications, though the startup acknowledged that its 10-times performance jump could be oversized for that use case in the near term, with broader adoption more likely toward the end of the decade.

The $200 million total funding raised by Eridu includes a recent oversubscribed Series A round led by Socratic Partners, Hudson River Trading, Capricorn Investment Group, Matter Venture, and veteran venture capitalist and Kleiner Perkins chairman John Doerr.

Bosch Ventures, MediaTek, and Fusion Fund are among a host of other firms backing the network switch startup, with the ultimate goal to reduce latency and network jitter and support “faster deployment of AI data centers.”

Eridu, upon exiting stealth mode, claimed its offering could generate significant savings, including up to 40% in capex and as much as 70% in networking power consumption.

“Billions-of-dollars of investment in AI data centers are being wasted because of the network wall,” said Perkins, who serves as Eridu’s CEO. “The plodding pace of improvement promised by the existing industry vendors is simply inadequate to solve the problem. Even new companies and solutions promising higher performance are, in fact, still subscale. Eridu has taken on and solved the key challenges across silicon, packaging, systems, and optics needed to break through that wall.”

The startup is also using advanced process and advanced system integration technologies from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to bring its switch to life.

Lucas Tsai, VP of business management at TSMC North America, commented: “This partnership reflects TSMC’s commitment to supporting startup innovators like Eridu by combining our semiconductor manufacturing excellence with their expertise in system architecture innovation, driving breakthroughs in high-performance networking for AI data center infrastructure.”

Despite emerging from stealth in 2026, Perkins’ on LinkedIn suggests he founded the startup back in 2023, following more than a decade at Mojo Vision. That venture sought to develop micro-LED technology to create augmented reality contact lenses.

A serial founder, the Eridu CEO created brands like OnFiber Communications, which sought to bring affordable fiber-based internet access and other data services to metro-based businesses; and Lightera Networks, an optical switch developer that was sold to Ciena in 1999 for around $550 million.

Arguably, the biggest founding on his CV is Infinera, which he co-founded alongside Jagdeep Singh and David Welch, initially under the name of Zepton Networks back at the turn of the century.

Perkins departed in 2011 (to found yet another company, Gainspeed), and Infinera went on to be acquired by Nokia in a deal worth $2.3 billion.

Interestingly, Gainspeed would also end up being snapped up by Nokia in 2016 for an undisclosed amount.