Salience Labs raises $125M for optical AI switches

Salience Labs announced on October 14, 2026 that it had completed an oversubscribed $125 million Series B funding round led by Bullhound Capital. The Oxford-based startup, which develops photonic chips and optical circuit-switching hardware for AI datacenter networking, said the new financing will support deployment of its technology, higher-volume manufacturing and expansion of its Silicon Valley presence.

The company said Bullhound Capital principal Callum Stewart will join its board. Salience also named AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank as new participants, alongside existing shareholders including Applied Ventures LLC, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures.

What does Salience Labs build?

Salience Labs is building optical circuit switching for AI datacenters, a category of networking gear that routes data using light rather than the electrical switching systems that still dominate many facilities. In reporting from SiliconANGLE, the company said most datacenters still rely on electronic switches and repeated optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversions, which it argues create efficiency limits for AI clusters.

The startup says its approach keeps data on optical connections and routes it directly on-chip, eliminating electrical signals in the datacenter network path. Salience says its switch architecture is intended to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks for scale-up AI networking.

The company said it was founded in 2021 and that its work is backed by research from the University of Oxford and the University of Münster. Unite.AI reported that Salience is led by CEO and co-founder Vaysh Kewada and CTO and co-founder Johannes Feldmann.

Why are investors backing it now?

Salience said the round followed a live demonstration of a 64-port all-optical photonic switch at ECOC 2026, which it described as an industry first for silicon photonics optical circuit switching. The company said the new funding will enable future 128-port and 256-port products intended to extend both scale-up and scale-out networks across the datacenter.

The timing also reflects investor interest in the scale of AI networking infrastructure. Salience cited a Dell’Oro Group forecast that cumulative spending on datacenter switches in AI back-end networks will approach $1 trillion over 2026-2030, with scale-up accounting for more than half of the market by 2030. SiliconANGLE also cited Cignal AI forecasting the optical circuit switching market to exceed $8 billion by the end of the decade.

AMD Ventures’ Patrick Rundell said AI infrastructure is increasingly being designed at rack scale and that networking directly affects performance, efficiency and economics. Intel Capital’s Srini Ananth said optical circuit switching can unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency, and described Salience’s differentiation as its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification.

What comes next for Salience Labs?

Salience said it will use the capital to accelerate deployment of its optical circuit-switching technology, scale volume manufacturing and expand its U.S. presence in Silicon Valley. The company said it will continue working with Keysight Technologies and Tower Semiconductor to scale manufacturing for high volume, and it plans to build out its Silicon Valley offices and open a second West Coast location.

Salience said its technology is the result of more than 10 years of silicon photonics research. It also said it will showcase its optical circuit-switching technology at the PECC Summit in Sunnyvale on October 20-21.

Independent coverage from City A.M. described Salience as an Oxford-based startup focused on photonic chips and optical circuit-switching hardware for AI datacenter networking. TokenPost separately reported that Salience had announced a $30 million Series A in 2025 led by Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund, showing the company has now stepped up to a much larger growth round as it moves from demonstration to manufacturing scale.