OpenLight has completed a $34 million Series A funding round designed to expand its footprint in AI data center networks.

Originally owned by electronic design automation (EDA) firm Synopsys, the company designs custom photonic application-specific integrated circuit (PASIC) chips, which use light instead of electrons to process and transmit data.

The Series A round was co-led by Xora Innovation and Capricorn Investment Group, with participants including Juniper Networks, now part of HPE, Mayfield, New Legacy Ventures, K2 Access, and Lam Capital, the corporate venture arm of semiconductor firm Lam Research.

With the funding round, OpenLight will complete its spin-out of Synopsys to venture-backed status and amp up its focus on optical interconnects for AI data center networks.

Such networks are rising with the tide of AI, with recent research by Dell’Oro Group finding that AI led to a 51% increase in global data center capex in 2024, hitting $455 billion in investment.

Real estate consulting firm JLL’s Data Center Project Development and Services, meanwhile, expects around 40% of total data center workloads to be AI-related by 2030.

Recent Ciena research though found only 16% of operators reported their optical networks as “very ready” for AI, while nearly one-third (29%) believe AI will contribute more than half of all long-haul traffic over the next three years.

OpenLight overview

Headquartered in Goleta, California, OpenLight was established in 2022 based on silicon photonics intellectual property (IP) from Juniper Networks.

The company was a subsidiary of Synopsys, which took a 75% stake in the firm, while Juniper Networks retained a 25% equity interest.

With the Juniper-backed funding, OpenLight reports it will expand its process design kit (PDK), which combines indium phosphide and silicon photonics through heterogeneous integration, supplying a catalog of passive and active building blocks – integrated lasers, modulators, amplifiers, and detectors.

This foundation allows customers to build custom PASICs using proven blocks, potentially cutting chip-development complexity and project timelines.

OpenLight plans to broaden its PDK library by adding more active and passive photonic components, including a 400 Gb/s modulator and heterogeneously integrated indium-phosphide on-chip lasers.

It also aims to roll out standards-based reference photonic integrated circuits at 1.6 Tb/s and 3.2 Tb/s, while scaling its engineering and support teams over the next 12 months in its transition toward volume production.

The firm currently holds more than 360 patents tied to its PDK and the manufacturing of heterogeneously integrated III-V photonics. More than 20 companies leverage the kit to design and fabricate PASICs for various applications, with OpenLight’s technology used across telecom, automotive, and industrial sensing, internet-of-things (IoT) sensing, healthcare, and quantum computing.

"This funding will allow us to scale our operations, deepen our R&D efforts, and bring our groundbreaking products to market faster. We believe heterogeneous integrated silicon photonics will transform the way data is processed and transmitted, and we're excited to be at the forefront of this revolution,” said Dr. Adam Carter, CEO of OpenLight.

The $34 million deal comes after recent high-profile funding in optical chips, including Teramount’s $50 million backing for its fiber-to-chip interconnects, and a $250 million infusion for optical interconnect vendor Celestial AI.