Ayar Labs, an industry member and sponsor of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC), announced the successful closing of a $500 million Series E funding round to scale production of its co-packaged optics (CPO) technology for next-generation AI infrastructure. The round was led by Neuberger Berman and included participation from institutional investors such as ARK Invest, Insight Partners, Qatar Investment Authority, and Sequoia Global Equities, along with strategic semiconductor partners including AMD, MediaTek, Alchip Technologies, and NVIDIA.
With this latest round, Ayar Labs has raised $870 million in total funding and reached a valuation of approximately $3.75 billion. The company plans to use the capital to expand high-volume manufacturing and testing capacity, strengthen ecosystem partnerships, and accelerate deployment of its optical interconnect solutions for hyperscale AI systems.
Ayar Labs is pioneering co-packaged optics, a technology that replaces traditional copper interconnects with optical links that transmit data using light. This approach enables significantly higher bandwidth and energy efficiency, capabilities that are becoming increasingly critical as AI workloads scale and data movement becomes a major bottleneck in modern computing systems.
BWRC congratulates Ayar Labs on this milestone and looks forward to continued collaboration in advancing cutting-edge semiconductor and photonics technologies that support the future of high-performance computing and AI infrastructure.