Oxford-based chip startup Salience Labs has raised $125m (£94m) from investors, including AMD and Intel. The funding round, led by Bullhound Capital, is intended to help the British firm scale production of its photonic chips.
These chips utilise light rather than electrical signals to transfer data between computing systems. This technology is designed to address the significant energy demands of increasingly powerful data centres, which is a major challenge for the AI industry.
Salience Labs plans to use the investment to expand its manufacturing capacity and strengthen its presence in Silicon Valley. The company aims to supply infrastructure for the global AI sector.
Vaysh Kewada, CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs, stated that optical circuit switching (OCS) will be crucial in AI data centre networking. He added that high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver the token economics demanded by workloads as customers implement optical links in their data centres.
The investment comes as the UK's AI ambitions face challenges from high electricity costs and difficulties in accessing the national grid. Demand for data centre connections has surged, with the UK's electricity connection queue tripling from 41 gigawatts to 125 gigawatts between November 2024 and June 2025, according to figures cited in an Ofgem consultation.