Neurophos Secures $110 Million Series A to Launch Exaflop-Scale Photonic AI Chips

Neurophos, a leader in photonic AI chip technology, led by Patrick Bowen, Hod Finkelstein, Preston Woo, Andrew Traverso, and others, has secured $110 million in an oversubscribed Series A round, bringing total funding to $118 million led by Gates Frontier, with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), Carbon Direct Capital, Aramco Ventures, Bosch Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, Space Capital, and others.

Modern AI inference requires massive power and compute, creating critical scalability and energy constraints in data centers. Neurophos is developing an optical processing unit with over one million micron-scale optical elements on a single chip, delivering up to 100× performance and energy efficiency gains. The technology is positioned as a drop-in GPU alternative to reduce costs and power consumption while enabling next-generation AI workloads.

Neurophos is advancing photonic computing to overcome the limits of Moore’s Law, using massive optical parallelism to increase speed and efficiency while reducing power constraints. Its micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators represent a 10,000× miniaturization over prior photonic components, enabling scalable, manufacturable photonic AI accelerators that are ultra-fast, energy-efficient, and adaptable to future workloads.

Investors highlight the need for disruptive compute architectures to meet rising AI power and scalability demands. Neurophos is positioned to deliver hyper-efficient optical computation on a credible product timeline, addressing the physical limits of silicon-based systems and enabling the next generation of AI infrastructure.

Neurophos’ technology reduces power consumption, enabling scalable AI infrastructure without exponential increases in energy or physical resources, making AI more accessible and cost-effective. Investors highlight its step-change improvements in efficiency and emissions reduction as critical for meeting rapidly growing compute demands.

The new funding will accelerate Neurophos’ development of its first integrated photonic compute system, including datacenter-ready OPU modules, a complete software stack, and early-access developer hardware. The company is expanding its Austin headquarters and opening a San Francisco engineering site to meet early customer demand. Additional investors include DNX Ventures, Geometry, Alumni Ventures, Wonderstone Ventures, MetaVC Partners, Morgan Creek Capital, Silicon Catalyst Ventures, Mana Ventures, Gaingels, and others, with Cooley LLP as legal counsel.