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Feb 19, 2026
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Neurophos Secures $110 Million Series A to Launch Exaflop-Scale Photonic AI Chips
NewDecoded
3 min read
Image by Neurophos
A New Era for AI Hardware
Neurophos, a leader in photonic technology based in Austin, announced today it has raised $110 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round. Led by Gates Frontier, the investment included participation from Microsoft’s venture fund M12, Carbon Direct Capital, and Aramco Ventures. The capital will be used to commercialize the company’s proprietary optical processing unit, which aims to deliver exaflop-scale performance for artificial intelligence workloads.
Breakthrough in Optical Scaling
The core of the innovation lies in micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators that are 10,000 times smaller than traditional photonic elements. This miniaturization allows the company to integrate over one million optical processing elements onto a single chip. By using light instead of electricity to perform complex matrix calculations, the hardware can achieve up to 100 times the energy efficiency of current industry-leading GPUs.
Industry Leaders Back Photonic Future
Dr. Marc Tremblay, a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, emphasized that modern AI demands a breakthrough in compute on par with the leaps seen in AI models themselves. Industry experts suggest that the power wall faced by traditional silicon makes such physics-level shifts necessary for sustainable scaling. The investment syndicate represents a mix of cloud infrastructure giants and sustainability-focused funds, all seeking post-silicon solutions for the growing energy demands of data centers.
Roadmap for Commercialization
The new funding will accelerate the delivery of the first integrated photonic compute system from Neurophos. This includes the development of data center-ready modules, a full software stack, and early-access hardware for developers. To support this growth, the company is expanding its Austin headquarters and opening a new engineering site in San Francisco to attract top-tier talent from across the semiconductor industry.
Beyond the Silicon Limit
Founded by Dr. Patrick Bowen and Dr. Andrew Traverso, the team includes veterans from major firms such as Nvidia, Apple, and Intel. The company's technology is designed as a drop-in replacement for existing GPUs, making it easier for data centers to adopt without overhauling their physical infrastructure. More information about their vision for high-speed, energy-efficient AI can be found at neurophos.com.
The funding of Neurophos signifies a critical transition in the semiconductor industry as the limits of traditional silicon-based GPUs become a bottleneck for artificial intelligence growth. By leveraging metamaterials to shrink optical components by four orders of magnitude, the company addresses the power wall that threatens the expansion of global data centers. This investment from major players like Microsoft and Aramco suggests that the future of high-performance inference is shifting away from electrical transistors toward light-based processing. As Moore’s Law stalls, the successful commercialization of photonic chips could redefine the infrastructure requirements for the next decade of machine intelligence.
