On February 4th, Celestial AI, a renowned developer of audacious AI computing platforms that promote energy, performance, and economic efficiencies, announced the series A investment of $56 million. It will be led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) in association with IMEC XPand, M-Ventures, Tyche Partners, The Engine, Temasek’s Xora Innovation fund, and Fitz Gate, venture capital investor in the Princeton University ecosystem.
The capital will be used to develop Celestial AI’s Orion accelerator products by elevating strategic supplier engagements (including Broadcom), product development, and the global engineering team. This initiative is a part of efforts to fulfill the Company’s mission to transform the way computing is performed with a more advanced processing system, powered by its proprietary Photonic Fabric™ technology platform. This platform enables the use of light for data transmission between chips and within chips as well.
We are addressing the problem of our time in computing – efficient data movement. Celestial AI’s hybrid photonic-electronic platform allows us to leverage the complementary strengths of electronics for high-performance, high-precision computing and photonics for high-speed, low-power, high-bandwidth data movement. The result is transformational performance advantages relative to electronic-only systems. The ML application benefits extend beyond performance and low power to latency, user-friendly software, and low total cost of ownership. Our competitive differentiation will increase with time, as AI model complexity increases, driving increased data movement.”
David Lazovsky, Celestial AI’s Founder and CEO.
The company is aiming to enable step-change advancements in AI computation by integrating photonics into accelerators for AI workloads. Power budgets today restrict server systems and chips. The Celestial AI Photonic Fabric enables a redistribution of the fixed power budget for computing. This offers some tremendous advantages over electronic-only solutions.
Photonics is poised to be the technology to usher in the next era of rapid growth in AI and high-performance computing, and we believe the Celestial AI team has the experience and vision to drive this industry transformation, It was Celestial AI’s software advantages that ultimately drove our decision to lead this financing. Their system architecture enables unparalleled software simplicity, which translates to ease of use for customers and reduced time to market. Software is the pathway to revenue, and Celestial AI’s solution changes the game in this large and rapidly expanding market.”
Isaac Sigron, Managing Director of KDT, and newly-appointed Celestial AI Board Member.