Bill Gates-backed fund, Aramco Ventures invest in US chip start-up

Logo of Aramco Ventures

Neurophos, a company specializing in photonic AI chip technology, raised $110 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $118 million.

In a company statement, Neurophos said the round was led by Gates Frontier, with participation from M12 (Microsoft’s venture capital fund), Carbon Direct Capital, Aramco Ventures, Bosch Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, Space Capital, among others.

The new funding will help accelerate the launch of Neurophos’ first fully integrated photonic computing system, which includes photonic processing units (OPUs) ready for deployment in data centers, a comprehensive software stack, and developer kits available to early-stage developers.

The company is also expanding its headquarters in Austin and opening an engineering hub in San Francisco to meet demand from early customers.

Founded and headquartered in Austin, Texas, Neurophos is developing what it calls a Photonic Processing Unit (OPU)—a chip comprising one million microscopic photonic processing elements, measured in microns, that use photons (light) to transmit data. By contrast, the more widely used graphics processing units (GPUs)—commonly employed to train and run AI models—rely solely on electrons (electricity) for data transmission.

The OPU represents a new class of AI accelerators that are ultra-fast, energy-efficient, and designed to scale with future AI workloads.