Lightmatter
Updated: November 25, 2025
Founders: Darius Bunandar, Nick Harris, Thomas Graham
Country: USA | Funding: $822M (+)
Founded: 2017
Website: https://lightmatter.co/
Lightmatter uses photonic computing to accelerate computation and communication between chips in cloud AI systems. The company's first two products are Passage chips, which utilize both photons and electrons to improve operational efficiency. They combine the computational tasks that electrons excel at (such as memory) with those that light excels at (such as performing massive matrix multiplications in deep learning models). Photonics enables multiple computations to be performed simultaneously because data arrives as light of different colors. This increases the number of operations per unit area and reuses existing hardware, improving energy efficiency. Passage takes advantage of the bandwidth of light to connect processors, similar to how fiber optic cables use light to transmit data over long distances. This allows disparate chips to function as a single processor.
Founded: 2017
Website: https://lightmatter.co/
Lightmatter uses photonic computing to accelerate computation and communication between chips in cloud AI systems. The company's first two products are Passage chips, which utilize both photons and electrons to improve operational efficiency. They combine the computational tasks that electrons excel at (such as memory) with those that light excels at (such as performing massive matrix multiplications in deep learning models). Photonics enables multiple computations to be performed simultaneously because data arrives as light of different colors. This increases the number of operations per unit area and reuses existing hardware, improving energy efficiency. Passage takes advantage of the bandwidth of light to connect processors, similar to how fiber optic cables use light to transmit data over long distances. This allows disparate chips to function as a single processor.
