US-based semiconductor technology developer Ayar Labs raised $24m on Wednesday in a series A round that included semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries and chipmaker Intel’s corporate venturing arm Intel Capital.
Venture capital fund and incubator Playground Global led the round, which also included VC firm Founders Fund. The company had previously closed a $2.5m seed round in 2016 led by FF Science, a seed-stage investment arm of Founders Fund, and backed by TechU Angels.
Founded in 2015, Ayar has developed a silicon chip that uses fibre optics to transmit data rather than current methods which utilise copper pins and wires. The technology offers 10 times more bandwidth while reducing power consumption by the same factor.
The chip was developed by Rajeev Ram and Vladimir Stojanovic at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), though Stojanovic is now associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at University of California, Berkeley.
The pair collaborated with Milos Popovic, who was then at University of Colorado Boulder but has since joined Boston University, and were assisted by PhD researchers Chen Sun at MIT and Mark Wade at Colorado. The series A funding will enable Ayar to drive the commercialisation of its chip.
