Photonic chip company Xscape Photonics raises $10 million in seed round

Altair (NASDAQ: ALTR), a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI), has invested $10 million in Xscape Photonics, a startup that has developed proprietary photonic chip technology for ultra-high bandwidth connectivity within data centres and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.

Until now, our computing has utilised traditional electronic methods to move large amounts of data between chips, which requires a lot of space and power and generates a lot of heat, leading to performance challenges as HPC applications grow exponentially, especially in the areas of data science and artificial intelligence.

By applying innovative photonics technology, Xscape has developed a platform that connects various computing elements in an environmentally sustainable manner, while delivering the highest possible performance. This novel approach uses photonics to dramatically reduce power consumption and heat generation, while increasing communication speed and power to support the dramatic increase in data transfer between chips, nodes and more.

This investment, along with collaboration with some of the world's best photonics innovators, will enable us to be at the forefront of high-fidelity and advanced technology, helping our customers solve their problems more effectively as they look to next-generation hardware," said James R. Scapa, founder and CEO of Altair. "

As part of the investment, Scapa will take a seat on Xscape Photonics' board of directors.

By applying innovative photonics technology, Xscape Photonics has developed a platform that connects various computing elements in an environmentally sustainable manner while delivering the highest performance.

The potential of photonics is immense as high speed data transfer is also relevant for software that facilitates simulation, HPC, AI and machine learning. In the future, more simulation and computing power will be needed to enable better analysis, more sustainable productivity, lower costs, better products and faster time to market. The shift to embrace photonics will allow organisations in all sectors - including hardware, software and product development companies - to accelerate the pace of innovation.

Xscape Photonics is led by Columbia University professors and world-leading photonics researchers, including

Alexander Gaeta - CEO and co-founder; Professor at Columbia University and a world leader in nonlinear photonics

Keren Bergman - Co-founder; Professor at Columbia University and world leader in computational photonic architectures

Michal Lipson - Co-founder; Professor at Columbia University, world leader in silicon photonics, MacArthur Prize recipient

Vivek Raghunathan - Co-founder and CTO; Senior Chief Engineer of Product Architecture for Broadcom's founding Silicon Photonics team; led Intel's first SiPh product upgrade

Yoshi Okawachi - Co-founder and Head of R&D; Research Scientist at Columbia University and world leader in photonic frequency comb technology

Alexander Gaeta

Gaeta said, "We are proud to be reshaping the future of computing by developing the most energy efficient, high bandwidth and high performance photonics technology that can scale in a sustainable manner while meeting the needs of the future. The investment and relationship with Altair will allow us to push the boundaries of our platform and integrate it with the world's best simulation, HPC and AI software to help customers across all industries take innovation to new heights."

01Entrepreneurial career after 30 years involved in teaching

Professor Alexander Gaeta, co-founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics, graduated from the University of Rochester in the US for his undergraduate, masters and PhD degrees and is currently the David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University, with research interests in quantum optics and nonlinear optics. gaeta has been a professor at Cornell University since 1992 and in 2015 joined Columbia University. After 30 years of involvement in teaching, he founded Xscape Photonics in July 2022.

Professor Gaeta has achieved remarkable results in the fields of optical physics and photonics. His team has carried out fundamental research on ultrashort laser pulse propagation and slow light propagation. He has pioneered non-linear optics in gas-filled hollow photonic crystal fibres and the team has demonstrated various aspects of ultrafast time lens technology, including its application to 'time-domain stealth'. Many important demonstrations in non-linear silicon-based photonics were run, including dispersion engineering and parametric gain, the generation of correlated photon pairs, the generation of Kerr optical combs in microresonators, and the generation of supercontinuum spectra.

Professor Gaeta is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America and the IEEE, and is a founding Editor-in-Chief of Optica magazine and a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Scholar.