Swiss startup depends on photonic chips to scale back power consumption of knowledge facilities

As the AI ​​boom continues, data centers are consuming alarming amounts of electricity. They are also responsible for 1% of global energy-related emissions. By 2030, their electricity demand could increase by 160%. Switzerland-based company Lightium wants to offer a solution.

The young startup announced today that it has raised $7 million in seed funding to use a next generation of photonic chips to both increase the performance of data centers and reduce their energy consumption.

Data centers are essentially large clusters of three components: central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), and optical links that transfer data between these processors.

These connections are typically based on silicon semiconductors and account for between 10 and 40 percent of a data center's energy consumption.

“Conventional semiconductor technologies that have served us well for decades are now reaching physical and operational limits,” Dirk Englund, MIT professor and co-founder of Lightium, told TNW.

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TFNL photonic chips

Lightium's technology is based on thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN), a glassy material that the startup says overcomes the limitations of silicon and can deliver faster transfer rates of 1.6 or 3.2 Tb/s, compared to the current maximum rate of 800 Gb/s.

“For operators of large data centers, the leap [in transmission rates] means processing more data and doing it more efficiently,” said Englund.

“This results in lower operating costs and significant energy savings,” he added.

TFLN is one of the most difficult materials to process and has so far only been used in academic and R&D environments for prototypes. This makes Lightium the first company to design and manufacture TFLN-based photonics chips at an industrial scale.

Vsquared Ventures and Lakestar led the financing round with $7 million. With the fresh capital, the Swiss startup will work on commercializing its production services for TFLN Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs).

Lightium expects to reach this launch goal in early 2025. The company is currently running a closed beta pilot with strategic partners. Customers using the company's platform can scale their photonics capabilities from prototyping to high-volume production.

The next step will be to integrate the technology into numerous sectors, such as satellite communications and quantum computing.

According to Englund, a key benefit of TFLN chips is their potential to reduce Europe's dependence on traditional semiconductor supply chains.

“Digital sovereignty is becoming existential for nations or groups of nations. Semiconductor materials and systems are becoming the lifeblood that sustains the economy, and relying on one or a few potentially misguided sources is like playing Russian roulette.”