Volantis Raises $88M for Photonic AI Inference Chips

Volantis Inc. has raised $88 million in a Series A round led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins Chair John Doerr and former Intel AI head Naveen Rao. The startup is developing an inference-optimized chip architecture using optical memory interconnects based on VCSELs, offering over 30 times the memory bandwidth of current accelerators. Its A-1 inference appliance features 10 terabytes of memory and 250 terabits per second of bandwidth, targeting 10,000 tokens per second on a 20-trillion-parameter model. Volantis plans to begin shipping the A-1 next year.