The Venture Codex

Participated · Series C · May 2023

Lightmatter builds a purely optical interconnect layer that lets hundreds to thousands of GPUs work synchronously in specially designed racks. Its photonic chips and on-rack optical wiring can enable 1,024 GPUs to operate together and the current interconnect delivers about 30 terabits, with 100 terabit capability on the roadmap. The company has been developing photonic chips since 2018 and is also working on new chip substrates to enable tighter networking tasks using light. Lightmatter positions itself as a foundry-like platform for hyperscalers, and several major datacenter companies are already customers though unnamed. Management expects power-per-chip and wafer-scale approaches to be key future differentiators and is preparing technology roadmaps accordingly. The company’s tech targets the interconnect bottleneck that limits scaling beyond single racks and aims to dramatically reduce latency and power overhead in large clusters. Lightmatter develops photonic AI hardware that uses arrays of microscopic optical waveguides to perform matrix-vector computations with light, targeting large AI workloads. Its full-stack offering includes Envise (computing hardware), Passage (interconnect) and Idiom (software) that integrates with PyTorch and TensorFlow. The company licenses relevant patents from MIT and highlights the ability to create “virtual chips” by using multiple wavelengths to multiply computational density. Lightmatter says this analog-digital hybrid approach can substantially reduce energy consumption compared with traditional GPU/TPU architectures. The company is running several pilots in beta and plans mass production in 2024. Financially, Lightmatter has been scaling since an $11M seed in 2018 and additional capital in 2021, and most recently closed a $154M Series C. Lightmatter develops photonic computing hardware and systems — including the Envise photonic AI accelerator — that perform certain neural-network linear algebra operations by steering light through optical circuits rather than using transistors. Its chips are currently optimized for high-throughput linear algebra (inference) and the company says its platform can be ~5x faster than an Nvidia A100 on large transformer models while using roughly 15% of the energy. The firm has built server-sized units that fit into standard racks and is working on a wafer-scale optical interconnect called Passage for future generations to improve chip-to-chip communication. Lightmatter has offices and more than 70 employees in Mountain View and Boston and is preparing an early access program to deliver test units to hyperscale customers. The company is hiring to support hardware production, go-to-market, service/support and the software stack required to operate the systems. Lightmatter develops ultra-efficient light-powered AI chips built on photonic processor technology. Its optical computer chips leverage the properties of light rather than electrical signals to enable fast and efficient inference and training engines. The company intends to use the newly raised funds to continue development of its light-powered computing platform. Financially, it announced $22M in a Series A-1 round, bringing its total Series A to $33M. The round was led by GV with participation from Matrix Partners and Spark Capital; GV partner Tyson Clark joined Lightmatter’s board. The funding supports continued R&D to advance photonics-based inference and training capabilities. Lightmatter develops photonic chips that perform key AI matrix-vector operations by routing light through configurable optical elements to compute results at the speed of light with far lower power and latency than conventional silicon chips. The technology originated from research by CEO Nick Harris at MIT; MIT owns and licenses some of the related patents to the company. Lightmatter has demonstrated a prototype chip with 32 “neurons” and is working toward chips with hundreds of neurons to increase density and parallelism. The chips are intended for specialty AI hardware used by developers and cloud providers rather than consumer devices. The company says its approach is compatible with existing CMOS fabrication methods, avoiding the need for new fabs. The recent financing is intended to build the team that will take the technology from prototype to product and commercial deployment.

Participated · Series C · May 2023

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Ayar Labs builds co-packaged optics that move data between chips with light instead of copper, reducing power consumption while boosting bandwidth for AI infrastructure. Its flagship TeraPHY optical engine is manufactured in concert with leading semiconductor partners and is designed to slot directly into existing accelerator and switch designs. By replacing traditional electrical I/O with optical links, the technology delivers significant performance gains and cost savings in power-constrained environments. Following its latest financing, the company plans to ramp production and testing capacity, open and staff a new office in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and deepen ecosystem partnerships to speed customer deployments. Ayar Labs’ CPO solution is already qualified for industry-standard fab, manufacturing, and packaging flows, positioning it for broad adoption. The company has raised a cumulative $870 million to date, providing substantial capital to execute its global expansion and commercialization roadmap.

Participated · Series B · Feb 2022

Classiq Technologies is a pioneering quantum-software company whose platform allows engineers to design a quantum program once and deploy it on a variety of quantum-computing back-ends. At the core of the product is Qmod, a proprietary language that automates many of the circuit-optimization steps normally performed manually, accelerating development time. The system also supports Python, giving users access to a wide range of open-source libraries, and it includes visualization and debugging tools that reduce reliance on costly simulations and let developers test performance on specific quantum chips. This hardware-agnostic approach addresses the fragmentation of today’s quantum landscape, where architectures range from ion-trap qubits to superconducting transistors. With fresh capital, the company intends to scale its international sales organization and deepen partnerships across the quantum ecosystem. Since the latest extension, Classiq’s Series-C funding now exceeds $200 million, the largest round disclosed for a quantum-software startup. No operating metrics such as revenue or user counts were reported in the article.

Participated · Series C · Sep 2021

Flywheel offers an enterprise imaging platform that aggregates, curates, and analyzes medical imaging and video data at scale, helping customers streamline research workflows and prepare AI-ready datasets. During 2025 the company broadened its product suite with a video viewing and annotation tool and launched Flywheel Validated, which supports 21 CFR Part 11–compliant imaging workflows for clinical trials. Its customer roster now includes 10 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies and 10 of the top 20 academic medical centers. Commercial traction was strong, with 43 % year-over-year growth in new business, a 40 % increase in committed revenue, and annual recurring revenue from pharma and device customers up 106 %. Net revenue retention exceeded 110 %, underscoring sticky usage and expansion within existing accounts. Backers of the company include Novalis LifeSciences, 8VC, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Novartis, and Intuitive Surgical. The new capital will be used to accelerate product innovation and further penetrate the clinical trial and AI model development markets.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2020

SafeBreach provides a patented continuous security validation platform that automatically and safely executes thousands of attack methods to validate network, endpoint, cloud, container and email security controls against its Hacker’s Playbook. The platform is used to simulate attacks broken down by methods, tactics and threat actors to assess security posture. SafeBreach protects nearly 100 enterprise customers, all within the Fortune 1000, including the top five largest financial, healthcare and pharmaceutical companies involved in COVID-19 vaccine and remediation efforts. Led by co-founder and CEO Guy Bejerano, the company is positioned as a leader in the BAS market. SafeBreach says it will use the new funding to accelerate geographic expansion and to evolve its product offerings. The company has now raised more than $106 million in total funding. SafeBreach offers a patented breach-and-attack simulation (BAS) platform that executes thousands of breach methods to validate network, endpoint, cloud and email security controls using a Hacker’s Playbook™ of research and real-world data. The platform gives a near real-time “hacker’s view” of an enterprise’s security posture to proactively predict attacks and improve SOC analyst response capabilities. Customers include dozens of multi-billion-dollar organizations across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications and retail. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Guy Bejerano and is based in Sunnyvale, California. SafeBreach plans to use new funding to accelerate product development, expand sales channels and partnerships globally, and add a suite of new services. SafeBreach offers a Breach and Attack Simulation platform that automatically executes thousands of breach methods from a growing Hacker’s Playbook to predict attacks, validate security controls and improve SOC analyst response. The platform provides a “hacker’s view” of an enterprise’s security posture to proactively identify weaknesses. Led by CEO and co-founder Guy Bejerano, the company emphasizes research and real-world investigative data in its simulation library. SafeBreach intends to use newly raised funds to continue expanding operations. The article reports a strategic funding round of $15M, indicating recent capital support to fuel growth. SafeBreach is a Sunnyvale, CA-based provider of a continuous security validation platform. Its platform provides a “hacker’s view” of an enterprise’s security posture to proactively predict attacks, validate security controls and improve SOC analyst response. The solution automatically executes breach methods using an extensive Hacker’s Playbook™ of research and real-world investigative data. Customers include financial, high-tech and retail companies deploying the platform to test the efficacy of security controls, validate compliance and identify outbound exfiltration routes. The company closed a $15M Series A in July 2016 and intends to use the funds to expand research and development as well as sales and marketing headcount. SafeBreach is led by CEO Guy Bejerano, CTO Itzik Kotler and VP of Security Research Amit Klein.