Meeting the explosion in data centre growth

Lightium, a Swiss photonics startup, has raised USD 7 million in seed funding to turbocharge the performance of data centers and reduce their energy consumption. The financing, led by Vsquared Ventures and Lakestar, will accelerate the commercialisation of Lightium’s production-grade Thin-Film Lithium Niobate (TFLN) Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) foundry services. Founded by Dr. Amir Ghadimi, Dr. Frédéric Loizeau, and MIT professor and serial entrepreneur Prof. Dirk Englund, Lightium is the first company to design and manufacture TFLN-based photonic chips at an industrial scale.

The rapid rise of AI and products like ChatGPT is leading to skyrocketing volumes of data and unprecedented energy consumption. By 2030, data centers will handle 100x more data and consume up to 10% of the world’s electricity. Their electricity consumption globally is already on par with that of Japan, making them the 5th largest energy-consuming country in the world.

Data centers fundamentally comprise large clusters of Central Processing Units (CPUs) and Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) to accelerate compute-intensive tasks and optical interconnects to transmit data at lightning speed between these processors. While companies like Nvidia have made significant strides in making GPUs more powerful, a critical gap remains in optical interconnects' data transmission speed and power efficiency. Semiconductor-based interconnects, widely used today, face significant technical challenges beyond 800 Gb/s, falling short of the speeds needed to manage the exponential growth in data.

To overcome these challenges, Lightium offers production-grade TFLN chip foundry services at a commercial scale. TFLN, a glass-like material, enables a significant boost in transmission rates and reduces power consumption. This means data rates of 1.6 or 3.2 Tb/s for customers while reducing the environmental impact and cost of their ever-growing digital consumption. However, TFLN is one of the most difficult materials to process and has, up to now, been restricted to prototyping in academic and R&D settings. Lightium precisely addresses this challenge with its proprietary manufacturing process geared towards volume production.

Dr. Amir Ghadimi, CEO of Lightium, said: “Current semiconductor-based technologies that are powering data centers have reached their limits - they cannot run faster or more efficiently. Lightium uses TFLN to solve this problem and we have now developed the manufacturing capability to provide this technology at scale for the industry. What used to be limited to academic and R&D cleanrooms has now become an accessible reality for the industry to adopt.”

Dr. Jakob Lingg, Investment Manager at Vsquared, says: "Optical communication companies have clear roadmaps for future data transmission and energy requirements. As silicon struggles to meet these demands, there is a strong market pull for alternative materials with superior electro-optical properties. These materials must not only meet strict performance standards but also endure the harsh environments of data centers. TFLN emerges as a promising solution. Vsquared is excited to partner with Lightium, who are leading this innovation with their expertise and ensuring TFLN PICs can be produced at wafer-scale for practical, scalable applications."

Steven Jacobs, Lakestar Partner & CPO, says: “As the demand for computing resources continues to surge, data centers and their customers demand better performance and lower costs. By transitioning from silicon photonics, which have reached the physical limits of their material properties, to TFLN, which can scale for the foreseeable future, Lightium enables data centers to increase their speeds 10x or more. At the same time, because of how efficient TFLN is, it can lower data center operating costs, which are primarily tied to energy consumption. This will dramatically benefit data center operators, their customers, and the planet.”

The versatility of Lightium’s TFLN platform extends its benefits to other applications and markets, such as satellite communication, quantum computing, novel optical computing architectures, and LIDAR applications. This makes its open-access foundry model ideal for meeting diverse technological needs across these sectors.

Over the next year, Lightium will enhance its manufacturing, design and testing capabilities, optimize its Process Design Kit (PDK), and expand its partnership network to support wide-scale commercialisation. Currently in a closed beta run with strategic partners, Lightium aims to launch its foundry services at the beginning of 2025. The company is actively recruiting talent to help fuel the company's growth and innovation.