AYAR LABS

Chen Sun, Mark Wade, Amir Atabaki, and Rajeev Ram were researchers at MIT and UC Berkeley who realized that the copper interconnects inside data centers were hitting physical limits. Moving data between chips using electricity generates massive heat, consumes enormous power, and limits bandwidth.

Their research showed that optical (light-based) interconnects could move the same data using 10x less power at 10x higher bandwidth. They founded Ayar Labs in 2015 to commercialize this technology.

B2B hardware sales. Ayar Labs sells optical I/O chiplets and packaging solutions to semiconductor companies and data center operators.

Revenue comes from product sales, licensing agreements, and co-development partnerships with chip manufacturers. The company also works with the US government on advanced computing programs.

TeraPHY Optical I/O Chiplet (in-package optical communications). SuperNova Remote Light Source (photonic power delivery).

Co-Packaged Optics (integrating optical I/O with processor chips). Compatible with standard semiconductor packaging.

1000x improvement in energy-per-bit versus electrical I/O.

Strategic partnerships with chip giants. Ayar Labs has partnered with Intel (co-packaged optics for data center chips), NVIDIA (potential integration with GPU architectures), and the US Department of Defense (advanced computing programs).

These partnerships provide both revenue and validation for the technology.

Manufacturing at scale. Moving from lab demonstrations to high-volume production of optical chiplets is extremely difficult.

The technology must be compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing processes. Competition from other optical interconnect startups (Lightmatter, Celestial AI) and from large semiconductor companies developing internal solutions.

Backed by Intel Capital, NVIDIA, Lockheed Martin Ventures, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The strategic investor lineup includes the companies most likely to use the technology at scale.