The race to build the next generation of supercomputers just got a massive speed boost from a company using light instead of electricity.
Leeds-based chip innovator Optalysys has secured a significant £23 million cash injection to accelerate its groundbreaking photonic computing technology. This funding round marks a pivotal moment for the hardware industry as it struggles to keep up with the explosive power demands of artificial intelligence.
A Major Win for Northern Tech
The substantial investment comes as a Series A extension round. This fresh capital highlights the growing confidence investors have in hardware solutions that can physically bypass the limitations of standard silicon chips.
Northern Gritstone led the funding round. This investment vehicle is dedicated to boosting science and technology businesses in the North of England. Their involvement signals a strong vote of confidence in Leeds as a burgeoning hub for deep tech innovation.
Several other heavyweights joined the round to support the vision of Optalysys.
- Lingotto Horizon: A deep tech investment fund owned by the holding company of the Agnelli family.
- imec.xpand: A value-add venture capital fund that targets game-changing nanotechnology innovation.
- NSSIF: The UK government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund.
The inclusion of the NSSIF is particularly telling. It suggests that the British government views Optalysys’ technology as critical for national security infrastructure. This likely relates to the chip’s ability to handle heavy encryption tasks which are vital for defense and intelligence sectors.
This £23 million brings the company’s total funding to a level where they can aggressively move from research and development into commercial production. The goal is clear. They want to put their chips into the data centers that power our digital world.
optalysys silicon photonics chip glowing blue data processing
Solving the Heat and Speed Bottleneck
We are hitting a hard wall in computing. Traditional electronic chips are reaching their physical limits. Making transistors smaller is getting harder and sending electrons through copper wires generates immense heat. This is a massive problem for data centers running AI models like ChatGPT or Claude.
Optalysys is ditching electricity for light.
Their technology uses silicon photonics. This involves using particles of light, or photons, to move and process data. Light travels significantly faster than electricity and generates almost no heat during transmission. This approach allows for calculations to happen at the speed of light.
Dr. Nick New, the CEO and co-founder of Optalysys, believes this is not just an upgrade but a total paradigm shift. He stated that photonic computing is a fundamental evolution in how we process information. It allows data to move with speed and efficiency that electronic chips simply cannot match.
“The investment reflects the scale of the opportunity and supports our ambition to bring photonic computing closer to mainstream adoption,” Dr. New explained to reporters.
The company is integrating this light-based processing onto a single chip that works alongside digital technologies. This hybrid approach aims to smash through the “Moore’s Law” plateau. It offers a way to increase computing power without building power plants just to run the servers.
The Holy Grail of Data Privacy
While speed is exciting, the security implications of this technology are perhaps even more revolutionary. A major focus for Optalysys is enabling a process called Fully Homomorphic Encryption, or FHE.
FHE is often described as the “Holy Grail” of cryptography.
Here is why FHE changes everything:
- Current Method: To process encrypted data, you must first decrypt it. This exposes the data to hackers during the processing stage.
- FHE Method: You can perform calculations on the data while it remains encrypted. The result is encrypted, and only the owner can unlock the answer.
The problem with FHE has always been computational cost. It requires an astronomical amount of math to work. Doing it on standard chips is agonizingly slow. It can take thousands of times longer than standard processing.
Optalysys claims their photonic chips can run these FHE algorithms at speeds that make them commercially viable.
This unlocks massive potential for industries dealing with sensitive data. Banks could analyze financial records without ever seeing the raw names or numbers. Hospitals could share patient DNA data for cancer research without ever exposing a single patient’s identity.
Early versions of this tech are already being tested in what the company calls “LightLocker” servers. These are designed to support secure blockchain applications where privacy is paramount.
Expanding Horizons Across the Atlantic
With the bank account replenished, Optalysys is looking west. A significant portion of the £23 million will be used to expand operations into the United States.
The US remains the global epicenter for the semiconductor and photonics ecosystem. Establishing a physical presence there allows Optalysys to tap into a deeper pool of specialized talent. It also puts them closer to potential partners like NVIDIA, Intel, or huge cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
The funding will also support:
- Commercial Acceleration: Moving from prototype chips to mass-manufacturable products.
- Software Development: Building the software tools developers need to actually program these light-based chips.
- Team Growth: Hiring engineers and commercial staff to support the global rollout.
The race for AI hardware dominance is fierce. While companies like NVIDIA dominate the current market with GPUs, the industry is desperate for the next leap in performance. Optalysys is betting that the future of computing is bright. Literally.
This funding ensures they have the runway to prove that light can indeed do the heavy lifting for the next era of technology.
The era of electronic dominance may be ending, and the age of photonics is just beginning.
We are witnessing a pivotal moment where physics meets commerce. If Optalysys succeeds, your future cloud storage, your bank account, and the AI you talk to will likely be powered by beams of light processed by a chip designed in Leeds. The transition from electrons to photons is not just faster; it is cooler, safer, and necessary for the sustainable growth of our digital infrastructure.
What do you think about computers running on light instead of electricity? Drop a comment below! If you are excited about the future of tech, share this story using #PhotonicComputing on X and LinkedIn.
