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Lightmatter, a company building computer chips that process information with light, has raised a $400 million Series D at a $4.4 billion valuation, highlighting investors’ appetite for novel solutions to AI’s computational demands. T. Rowe Price Associates led the round with additional backing from previous investors GV and Fidelity. The raise continues Boston-based Lightmatter’s remarkable growth. Founded in 2017, the company has raised $709 million in the past 18 months. With its Series D, Lightmatter has nearly quadrupled its previous valuation of $1.2 billion in a $155 million Series C-2 that closed in December 2023. In May 2023, it raised...

Enlarge ImageConceptual bridge. This tiny silicon beam links light to vibration, potentially opening the way to technologies that combine optics and mechanics.Credit: M. Eichenfield et al., Nature, Advanced Online Publication (18 October 2009) A tiny ladderlike beam of silicon converts light into vibrations and vice versa with extremely high efficiency, physicists report. That may seem like an esoteric result, but the finding could open the way to new physics and someday serve as a key element in optical microcircuits akin to the electronic microcircuits in computer chips. Although the effect is ordinarily very small, light exerts forces on the...

Modulating A Beam Of Light With Electricity by Bill Steele Ithaca NY (SPX) May 20, 2005 Much of our electronics could soon be replaced by photonics, in which beams of light flitting through microscopic channels on a silicon chip replace electrons in wires. Photonic chips would carry more data, use less power and work smoothly with fiber-optic communications systems. The trick is to get electronics and photonics to talk to each other. Now Cornell University researchers have taken a major step forward in bridging this communication gap by developing a silicon device that allows an electrical signal to modulate a...