PicoJool announced a $27.5 million Series A on 24 September 2026 to scale production of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers for optical interconnects inside AI clusters, where copper links are running out of headroom.
Socratic Partners leads, Hudson River Trading joins
Socratic Partners led the round, with Hudson River Trading participating and the company's earlier seed backer Playground Global — the venture firm chaired by former Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger — continuing to support. Total funding raised now stands at $39.5 million after a $12 million seed in November 2025.
"The network is the AI, and connectivity is becoming one of the defining constraints on performance," Gelsinger said. Rack-scale AI systems from NVIDIA, AMD and hyperscalers now hit power and bandwidth limits well before their GPUs do, and photonics is one of the few pathways left.
200G VCSELs and MicroVCSEL modules
PicoJool's portfolio ranges from 100G and 200G VCSELs to smaller MicroVCSEL configurations at 50G NRZ and 64G NRZ/PAM4, aimed at scale-up fabrics that need 800 Gbps and eventually 3.2 Tbps aggregate links. The startup will use the proceeds to expand production capacity, add design and applications engineers, and support ramp with hyperscale customers.
Silicon photonics money keeps arriving
The round adds to a growing pool of optical-networking investment as the industry scrambles for scale-out bandwidth. Tower Semiconductor just detailed a $4 billion Japan expansion for silicon photonics, and Broadcom, Cisco and Arista have all deepened their photonics investments this year. PicoJool's pitch: keep the well-understood VCSEL architecture, push the data rate.
Reporting based on coverage from SiliconANGLE, BusinessWire and Playground Global.