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Ayar Labs

Silicon-photonics chip startup building optical interconnects to replace copper in AI servers.

Founders

Alexandra Wright-Gladstein (United States · ♀) — While at MIT Sloan, Wright-Gladstein co-founded Ayar Labs in 2015 and served as founding CEO to commercialize MIT/Berkeley silicon-photonics research into optical chip interconnects.
Mark Wade (United States · ♂) — A silicon-photonics researcher, Wade co-founded Ayar Labs (later becoming CEO) to bring light-based chip-to-chip interconnects to market.
Chen Sun (United States · ♂) — An MIT photonics PhD, Sun co-founded Ayar Labs to develop its monolithic optical chiplet technology.
Vladimir Stojanovic (Serbia · ♂) — A Berkeley/MIT professor whose lab pioneered electronic-photonic integration, Stojanovic co-founded Ayar Labs as its chief architect to productize silicon-photonic interconnects.

Shares the most investors with (number = shared investors):

Date	Round	Amount
Mar 2026	Series D Plus Ayar Labs raised a $500M Series E at a $3.8B valuation to scale its co-packaged optics for AI infrastructure.	$500M
Dec 2024	Funding round Ayar Labs completed a 155M USD round reaching unicorn status, with Foresight Group, AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and NVIDIA participating, to scale its optical I/O technology.	$155M

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