The new year started off with a bang for private semiconductor companies, with 18 garnering mega funding rounds exceeding $100 million, and two, Rapidus and Cerebras, reaching the $1 billion mark. Predictably, the vast majority of those are either designing chips primarily for AI inference workloads or attempting to overcome bandwidth limitations by improving interconnects from the chip level to the data center level. As a result, photonics remained a popular segment for investment.

One area where some of that AI power is being utilized is chip design itself, with several startups receiving fresh funds to implement agentic flows for EDA tools and build physics-informed models specifically tuned for chip design.

An interesting note this quarter is the frequency with which some startups are bringing in additional funding. More than a half-dozen companies that last raised money less than a year ago added substantially to their coffers. Plus, new approaches to lithography and epitaxy equipment, power management solutions, and signal processing feature in this look at 80 companies that collectively raised over $8 billion in the first quarter of 2026.

• Summary table
• Chips
• AI hardware
• EDA
• Manufacturing & equipment
• Memory & storage
• Analog & mixed signal
• Power devices
• Photonics & optics
• Previous reports

Chips

Kandou AI raised $225.0M in strategic funding led by Maverick Silicon with participation from SoftBank, Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Alchip Technologies. Kandou provides high-speed signaling and SerDes technologies for copper chip-to-chip interconnects in data center infrastructure, AI, and consumer electronics. Its chip and IP portfolio includes PCIe, CXL, and USB retimers as well as ultra-short SerDes PHYs for MCMs and chiplet-based designs. Kandou says its Chord multi-wire signaling technology, which is a generalization of differential signaling, enables links with better signal integrity and lower power consumption compared to differential techniques like PAM-4. Funds will support the manufacturing ramp-up of high-performance AI connectivity chips and the development of next-gen multi-terabit products. Founded in 2011, it is based in Saint-Sulpice, Switzerland, and has raised $280M to date.

Eridu emerged from stealth with $200.0M in Series A funding led by Socratic Partners, Hudson River Trading, Capricorn Investment Group, and Matter Venture Partners, with participation by Bosch Ventures, Eclipse Capital, Fusion Fund, Osage University Partners, SBVA, TDK Ventures, VentureTech Alliance, Zelda Ventures, and others. Eridu is developing a network switch for AI data centers. The switch is based on a new architecture that unifies silicon, optics, packaging, systems, and software to improve performance, radix, and efficiency, supporting scale-out domains of hundreds of thousands of GPUs and scale-up domains of thousands of GPUs while reducing the number of switches needed. Funding will be used to complete development. Founded in 2024, it is based in Saratoga, California, USA.

Ethernovia raised over $90.0M in Series B funding led by Maverick Silicon with participation from Socratic Partners, Conduit Capital, CDIB-TEN Capital, Porsche SE, Qualcomm Ventures, and Fall Line Capital. Ethernovia designs Ethernet-based, packet processor-centric networking chips. Designed to support the real-time sensor, AI, and control data demands of software-defined autonomy across vehicles, robots, and intelligent machines, the packet processors support programmable data paths and are engineered to aggregate, route, and intelligently manage high-bandwidth sensor, vision, and AI data streams with deterministic latency and high power efficiency. Funds will be used to accelerate development of its next-generation packet processor. Founded in 2018, it is based in San Jose, California, USA.

Primemas raised $72.0M in Series B financing. Primemas develops a chiplet-based hub SoC platform to streamline chip design for CXL, AI, and data analytics markets. The hublet platform includes CPU, memory controllers, I/O, security, and SDK, to which a customer’s unique accelerator IP can be added. Primemas has used the platform for a CXL 3.0 controller and also offers an FPGA-based companion chiplet. Founded in 2023, it is based in Santa Clara, California, USA.

Efficient Computer raised $60.0M in a Series A round led by Triatomic Capital with participation from Eclipse Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Overlap Holdings, Box Group, RTX Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, and others. Efficient Computer has developed a reconfigurable dataflow processor architecture and software stack that it claims greatly improves performance per watt by eliminating unnecessary data movement and architectural overheads. The architecture expresses programs as a ‘circuit’ of instructions that shows which instructions talk to each other, enabling the circuit to be laid out spatially across an array of extremely simple processors to execute the program in parallel. The general-purpose processor is programmable via mainstream embedded programming languages and AI/ML frameworks. It targets a range of edge and embedded high-performance applications. Funds will be used to accelerate the product roadmap and hire. Founded in 2022, it is based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and has raised $76M to date.

Eliyan raised $50.0M in strategic investment from AMD, Arm, Coherent, Meta, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Intel Capital. Eliyan develops chiplet interconnect technologies for multi-die architectures. Its NuLink PHY technology supports both BoW and UCIe and is available for die-to-die and die-to-memory connections in both standard and advanced packages. The PHY is capable of simultaneous bidirectional signaling, enabling designs to receive data while simultaneously transmitting data on the same wire at the same time. The company has also developed longer-reach chip-to-chip IP, designed to connect two chips on separate packages across a PCB with the same levels of performance as SerDes connections at lower power. Eliyan also designs memory and I/O chiplets for scale-up network connectivity, targeting 1.6 Tbps to 12.8 Tbps link bandwidths in AI accelerator and memory expansion architectures. Funds will be used to accelerate manufacturing and the qualification of next-gen products. Founded in 2021, it is based in Santa Clara, California, USA.

AheadComputing raised $30.0M in a seed 2 round led by Eclipse Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and Cambium Capital Partners, with additional participation from Corner Capital Management, Trousdale Ventures, EPIQ Capital Group, MESH Ventures, and Stata Capital. AheadComputing designs 64-bit RISC-V application processor IP. The startup says it has developed a microprocessor architecture for general-purpose computing that also enables AI workloads to run efficiently. Aiming to serve server, client, mobile, and edge applications, the company is focused on producing high per-core performance while addressing thermal density constraints and multiprocessor scalability. Funds will support R&D, software, and test chip development. Founded in 2024, it is based in Beaverton, Oregon, USA, and has raised $53M to date.

AI hardware

Cerebras Systems raised $1.0B in Series H funding led by Tiger Global, with participation from Benchmark Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Atreides Management, Alpha Wave Global, Altimeter Capital, AMD, Coatue, 1789 Capital, and others. Cerebras makes wafer-scale AI processors. Its third-generation technology, the Wafer Scale Engine 3, contains 4 trillion transistors to deliver 125 petaflops of AI compute through 900,000 AI-optimized cores with 44 GB of on-chip SRAM and 21 petabytes per second of memory bandwidth. Up to 2048 systems can be connected together. The company claims its wafer-scale chips can perform inference and training 20x faster than conventional GPUs with reduced power per unit compute. In addition to on-prem systems containing its packaged wafer, the company operates data centers to provide cloud-based access to its processors. The company is preparing for an IPO, expected later this year. Founded in 2015, it is based in Sunnyvale, California, USA.

MatX raised $500.0M in Series B funding led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness LP, joined by Spark Capital, Triatomic Capital, Harpoon Ventures, Alchip, Marvell, and individual investors. MatX is designing a high-throughput, low-latency LLM chip based on a splittable systolic array. Designed frontier AI labs, the chip combines the low latency of SRAM-first designs with the long-context support of HBM and targets training, reinforcement learning, inference prefill, and inference decode workloads. Founded in 2023, it is based in Mountain View, California, USA.

Rebellions closed a $400.0M pre-IPO funding round led by Mirae Asset Financial Group and the Korea National Growth Fund. Rebellions designs AI processors for large-scale inference across a range of workloads, including LLMs, MoE, and multimodal. Its AI accelerator SoC architecture contains four homogeneous chiplets and a full-chip mesh over UCIe-Advanced interconnects, along with unified mixed-precision compute, holistic synchronization, and HBM3E. The company offers its NPU in software-centric, vertically integrated AI infrastructure platforms, including servers with up to 2 PFLOPS FP8 performance, racks, and scalable multi-rack clusters, all built around the belief that AI infrastructure will be defined by open ecosystems that abstract hardware complexity. Founded in 2020, it is based in Seongnam, South Korea, and has raised $850M to date.

SambaNova raised $350.0M in Series E financing led by Vista Equity Partners and Cambium Capital, with participation from Intel Capital, First Data Corporation, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Gulf Development Public Company Limited, Mayfield Capital, Saudi First Data, Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, A&E Investments, 8Square, Atlantic Bridge, BlackRock, Alphabet’s GV, Nepenthe Investments, Nuri Capital, and Redline Capital. SambaNova designs inference chips and infrastructure based on its reconfigurable dataflow unit (RDU) architecture. Instead of operating kernel-by-kernel, the architecture creates an assembly line process that moves data from operation to operation through a grid of programmable compute units and SRAM programmable memory units. While computation executes for one operator, data is fetched in parallel for the next, creating a streaming pipeline. The company recently released its fifth-generation chip, which links up to 256 accelerators over a multi‑terabyte‑per‑second interconnect to cut time‑to‑first‑token and support larger batch sizes. Founded in 2017, it is based in San Jose, California, USA.

Axelera AI raised over $250.0M in a round led by Innovation Industries, with participation from BlackRock, SiteGround Capital, Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium, Invest-NL, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Verve Investments. Axelera provides an inference acceleration platform for generative AI and computer vision. Its chips utilize SRAM-based digital in-memory computing and a RISC-V controlled dataflow architecture to minimize data movement between memory and compute elements, reducing energy consumption and cooling requirements. The company also offers quantization techniques and mapping tools that reduce AI computational load and increase energy efficiency while minimizing accuracy loss for a wide range of networks. It targets physical AI and edge AI in industries including defense and public safety, industrial manufacturing, retail, agritech, robotics, and security. Founded in 2021, it is based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and has raised over $450M to date.

Positron AI raised $230.0M in Series B funding led by ARENA Private Wealth, Jump Trading, and Unless Management, joined by Qatar Investment Authority, Arm, Helena Group, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DFJ Growth, Resilience Reserve, Flume Ventures, and 1517 Fund. Positron designs energy-efficient hardware for long-context transformer model inference. Its first product, an FPGA-powered server, is based on a memory-optimized architecture that achieves over 93% bandwidth utilization and can support trillion-parameter models. The company says it can map any transformer model directly onto hardware. Positron’s upcoming custom silicon is designed to support 2 TB of LPDDR memory per accelerator and 8 TB of memory per system. Tape out is expected toward the end of 2026, with production in early 2027. Founded in 2023, it is based in Reno, Nevada, USA.

Upscale AI raised $200.0M in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation with participation from Maverick Silicon, StepStone Group, Mayfield, Prosperity7 Ventures, Intel Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. Upscale AI provides silicon, systems, and software for ultra-low AI latency networking. Based around open standards such as ESUN, Ultra Accelerator Link, and Ultra Ethernet, the company’s platform unifies GPUs, AI accelerators, memory, storage, and networking into a single, synchronized AI engine. Offerings include a high-bandwidth AI networking fabric for data centers, a network operating system based on SAI/SONiC, and rack platforms. Founded in 2025, it is based in Santa Clara, California, USA.

Taalas received $169.0M in funding. Taalas develops an automated flow for rapidly implementing any type of AI model in silicon. The startup’s approach unifies storage and compute in a single chip at DRAM-level density. Its first product is a hard-wired Llama 3.1 8B, while its second will be a mid-sized reasoning LLM expected this spring, followed by a frontier LLM in the winter. Founded in 2023, it is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Quadric raised $30.0M in Series C funding led by BEENEXT Capital Management, joined by Uncork Capital, Pear VC, Volta Ventures, Gentree Fund, Wanxiang America, Pivotal Corporation, and Silicon Catalyst Ventures. Quadric designs general-purpose neural processing unit (GPNPU) processor IP. The fully C++ programmable GPNPU and end-to-end toolchain can run any existing or future AI model on a single unified hybrid Von Neumann + 2D SIMD architecture that combines matrix, vector, and scalar operations in one execution pipeline. Scalable from 1 TOPS to 864 TOPS, the Chimera GPNPU targets edge LLM, automotive, and enterprise vision applications. Based in Burlingame, California, USA, it was founded in 2017 and has raised $72M to date.

Great Sky raised $14.0M in a seed round led by Bison Ventures with participation from Matchstick Ventures, Range Ventures, and individual investors. Great Sky designs AI chips that combine ultra-low-temperature superconducting computation, high-bandwidth optical communication, and brain-inspired architectural principles. By co-locating memory and processing, the startup says its architecture enables high-speed programmability as well as learning algorithms that support on-device adaptation, so systems can learn from new data streams without retraining cycles. Founded in 2024, it is based in Boulder, Colorado, USA.

EDA

Ricursive Intelligence raised $300.0M in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, joined by DST Global, Nvidia’s NVentures, Felicis Ventures, 49 Palms Ventures, Radical AI, and Sequoia Capital. Ricursive Intelligence is developing AI models to automate all stages of chip design and verification with the goal of shortening semiconductor development timelines. The startup is particularly focused on creating a positive feedback loop in which its platform is used to design AI chips that, in turn, enable more powerful AI models that can further improve semiconductor design, and so on. Funds will be used for hiring and to expand its compute infrastructure. Founded in 2025, it is based in Palo Alto, California, USA.

ChipAgents closed a $50.0M Series A1 round led by Matter Venture Partners with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron Ventures, MediaTek, and Ericsson. ChipAgents offers an agentic AI chip design environment. By deploying AI agents for EDA workflows, the company says it can provide a 10x boost in RTL design, debugging, and verification productivity. Its chip design environment enables designers to transform concepts into precise design specifications using simple language prompts, analyzes and generates RTL design specs and code, auto-completes Verilog, automates the creation of testbenches, and autonomously verifies and debugs design code through real-time learning from simulations. Funds will support platform scaling, expanding engineering and research, and global deployment. Founded in 2024, it is based in Santa Clara, California, USA, and has raised $74M to date.

Normal Computing raised $50.0M in strategic funding led by Samsung Catalyst Fund, joined by Galvanize, Brevan Howard Macro Venture Fund, ArcTern Ventures, Celesta Capital, Drive Capital, First Spark Ventures, and Micron Ventures. Normal is developing an AI-powered EDA platform that it is using to design silicon IP for thermodynamic computing. Its EDA software applies auto-formalization, which combines LLMs with formal logic, to build an understanding of a team’s intent and goals by integrating with their specs and workflow to design, optimize, and prove the correctness of the silicon. It spans traditional DV/RTL automation as well as end-to-end and unconventional silicon design workflows. Using its EDA software, Normal designed and taped out a thermodynamic computing chip targeting multi-modal diffusion GenAI model inference. Founded in 2022, it is based in New York, New York, USA, and has raised $85M to date.

Manufacturing & equipment

Rapidus received JPY 267.6B (~$1.7B) in strategic investment from Japan’s Information-Technology Promotion Agency and private sector companies, including Canon, Development Bank of Japan, Fujitsu, NTT, SoftBank, and Sony Group. Rapidus is a pure-play foundry that will offer leading-edge process technology and advanced packaging in an integrated, end-to-end approach. The company is currently building a 2nm logic semiconductor fab, with mass production expected to begin in 2027. Founded in 2022, it is based in Tokyo, Japan.

Lace Lithography raised $40.0M in Series A funding led by Atomico, joined by Microsoft’s M12, Linse Capital, Vsquared Ventures, Future Ventures, Runa Capital, Deep Future, SETT Spain, and Nysnø Climate Investments. Lace is developing helium atom beam lithography equipment, which it claims can achieve a 0.1nm beam width to pattern extremely small feature sizes. It hopes to have a test tool in a pilot fab around 2029. Founded in 2023, it is based in Bergen, Norway, and has raised $60M to date.

GS Microelectronics (GSME) raised $35.0M in Series B funding led by Maverick Silicon. GSME provides customized silicon solutions, including RF design, power management ICs, mmWave front-end IP, turnkey manufacturing operations, and quality assurance to IC design and system companies. The funding will support the company’s expansion into AI-driven chip design and advanced packaging services, including CoWoS-class architectures. It will also support strategic acquisitions and hiring. Founded in 2021, it is based in San Jose, California, USA.

Gaianixx raised JPY 2.0B (~$12.7M) in Series C financing from University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners, JX Metals Corporation, JIC Venture Growth Investments, Alconix, i-nest Capital, SMBC Venture Capital, Mitsui Kinzoku-SBI Material Innovation Fund, Vertex Ventures Japan, Toray International, and Kiraboshi Capital. Gaianixx has developed an epitaxy technology for growing high-quality single crystals in a multilayer structure using a dynamic lattice matching mechanism. Its multifunctional interlayer film mitigates lattice mismatch and enables the formation of single-crystalline films between dissimilar materials, with applications in semiconductor wafers, including for MEMS, power devices, and LEDs, as well as piezoelectric and ceramic films. Funds will be used for large-scale sample supply in preparation for mass production as well as hiring. Founded as a spin-out from the University of Tokyo in 2021, it is based in Tokyo, Japan.

Chiral closed a $12.0M seed round led by Crane Venture Partners, with participation from Quantonation, HCVC, and Founderful, as well as public funding from Innosuisse. Chiral develops semiconductor manufacturing equipment for wafer-scale fabrication of transistors with nanomaterials. Initially focused on carbon nanotubes with plans to expand to TMDs, hBN, and graphene, the startup’s robotic nanomaterial integration and metrology system performs contamination-free mechanical transfer of nanomaterials at room temperature with sub-micron alignment accuracy. Chiral also offers an end-to-end fabrication service. Founded in 2023 as a spin out from ETH Zurich and Empa, it is based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Femtum raised CAD $16.0M (~$11.8M) in Series A funding led by BDC Capital, with participation from Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Cathay Venture, i4 Capital, Boreal Ventures, Quantacet, Hamamatsu Ventures, and Eureka. Femtum offers a mid-infrared fiber laser platform for integration into semiconductor equipment. It currently provides laser cleaning and laser trimming solutions designed for high-precision wafer-level processing. Funds will support the expansion of production capacity for high-volume manufacturing and international expansion. A spin-out from the Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers founded in 2017, it is based in Québec, Canada.

ThirdAI Automation raised $3.0M in seed funding led by Endiya Partners and Capria Ventures. ThirdAI offers a causal AI platform to troubleshoot semiconductor equipment and process failures. The system unifies equipment logs, sensor streams, images, service/field reports, and technical documentation into a single causal-intelligence layer and includes a root cause analysis copilot that maps cause-and-effect relationships. Funds will be used to accelerate product development, scale deployments, and hire. Founded in 2024, it is based in San Francisco, California, USA.

Memory & storage

Vertical Compute raised €37.0M (~$42.9M) in seed funding led by Quantonation with participation from Flanders Future Techfund, Wallonie Entreprendre, Sambrinvest, Noshaq, InvestBW, Drysdale Ventures, Kima Ventures, Eurazeo, XAnge, Vector Gestion, imec.xpand, imec, VLAIO, and Bpifrance. Vertical Compute is developing a vertically integrated memory and compute technology. Targeted for AI hardware accelerators, its chiplet-based solutions store bits in a high-aspect-ratio vertical structure that integrates vertical data lanes on top of computation units. By reducing data movement and bringing large data closer to computation, the startup says its 3D approach minimizes latency and cuts energy consumption compared to traditional 2D memory architectures. A spin-off from imec founded in 2024, it is based in Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.

Qualinx closed a €20.0M (~$23.3M) investment round led by the Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, FORWARD.ONE, Innovation Quarter, and Waterman Ventures. Qualinx designs dynamically reconfigurable, ultra-low power global navigation satellite system (GNSS) SoCs and front-end receivers. The startup’s digital RF technology converts signals to digital at the front end, replacing 80% of the analog content of any receiver, simplifying the signal chain and improving energy efficiency. Target applications include wearables, communications, agriculture, and smart infrastructure. Founded in 2015, it is based in Delft, the Netherlands.

Vervesemi Microelectronics raised $10.0M in Series A funding led by Unicorn India Ventures and Ashish Kacholia, joined by Roots Ventures, Caperize Fina, MAIQ Growth Scheme, and Six Stone Capital. Vervesemi designs analog signal chain ICs and silicon IP. Its approach integrates machine learning to enhance signal processing, enabling real-time self-healing and fail-safe mechanisms that ensure high accuracy in harsh environments and compensate for component aging. Vervesemi says its ML technology can improve analog signal conditioning and conversion by over 30dB. Target markets include smart energy, industrial control, medical devices, and automotive. Funds will help accelerate commercialization. Founded in 2017, it is based in Greater Noida, India.

Power devices

Amber Semiconductor raised $30.0M in Series C funding. AmberSemi offers a power management tile that can be mounted on the backside of a board, enabling power to be delivered through a vertical path that reduces power distribution losses. The company says its DC-DC power conversion tile, targeted at AI data centers, replaces over 33 power ICs. Founded in 2017, it is based in Dublin, California, USA.

Claros raised $30.0M in seed funding led by General Catalyst and Red Cell Partners with participation from Systemiq Capital, Aero X Ventures, Trenches Capital, and others. Claros offers a chip-to-grid power management platform for data centers. The platform consists of an integrated voltage regulator (IVR) that delivers power directly to processing units and a DC-native power distributor that minimizes AC/DC conversion losses and integrates with power sources. Founded in 2024, it is based in Torrance, California, and McLean, Virginia, USA.

Photonics & optics

Ayar Labs closed a $500.0M Series E round led by Neuberger Berman, joined by Alchip Technologies, ARK Invest, Insight Partners, MediaTek, Qatar Investment Authority, Sequoia Global Equities, 1789 Capital, Advent Global Opportunities, Boardman Bay Capital Management, IAG Capital Partners, Light Street Capital, Playground Global, AMD Ventures, and NVIDIA. Ayar Labs develops in-package optical interconnects. Optimized for AI, the standards-based co-packaged optics solution pairs optical I/O chiplets with multi-wavelength light sources to provide terabits of bandwidth bidirectionally from an ASIC/FPGA/XPU package with reach from mm to km package-to-package. The chiplet’s modular multiport design can carry up to 16 light channels per port, while the light source provides up to 16 wavelengths of light and powers up to 16 ports. Funds will be used to scale high-volume production and test capacity to accelerate the deployment of its CPO solution. Founded in 2015, it is based in San Jose, California, USA, and has raised $870M to date.

Olix raised $220.0M in Series A funding led by Hummingbird Ventures, joined by Crane Venture Partners, Plural Platform, Vertex Ventures, LocalGlobe, Entrepreneurs First, and others. Olix is designing an optical tensor processing unit for inference acceleration. The SRAM-based architecture combines an optical digital processor with a novel memory and interconnect architecture, which the startup claims enables bit-perfect logic with improved performance. Founded in 2024 and formerly named Flux Computing, it is based in London, UK.

Neurophos raised $110.0M in Series A funding led by Gates Frontier, with participation from Microsoft’s M12, Carbon Direct Capital, Aramco Ventures, Bosch Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, Space Capital, and others. Neurophos has developed an optical processing unit (OPU) that integrates over one million micron-scale metamaterial optical processing elements on a single chip with an analog systolic array architecture. Designed as a drop-in replacement for GPUs in AI data centers, its debut chip aims to provide 0.47 ExaOPS of FP4/Int4 MAC/GEMM compute and operates at 235 TOPS/W. Founded in 2020, it is based in Austin, Texas, USA.

Mesh Optical Technologies raised over $50.0M in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital. Mesh is developing high-volume optical manufacturing and packaging processes. Its first product is an optical transceiver for AI workloads and data centers that linearly translates electrical signals to light at 1.6 Tb/s and is packaged entirely with flip-chip die bonding. Founded in 2025, it is based in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Xscape Photonics added $37.0M to its Series A round, led by Addition with participation from IAG Capital Partners, NVIDIA, and others. Xscape Photonics offers a fully programmable, multi-wavelength photonics platform for AI data center fabrics. Its fully redundant External Laser Small Form-factor Pluggable device can emit up to eight wavelengths of light, with a roadmap to a multi-color wavelength-division multiplexing fabric capable of 128 colors for ultra-fast, high-capacity, and low-power optical data transmission. Founded in 2022, it is based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, USA, and has raised nearly $95M to date.

Optalysys raised £23.0M (~$31.1M) in a Series A extension round led by Northern Gritstone with participation from imec.xpand, Lingotto Horizon, and the UK government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund. Optalysys combines silicon photonics with digital technologies to integrate data movement and processing on a single chip for applications including fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and cloud infrastructure. The company has launched a dedicated hardware solution designed for encrypted blockchain applications. Funds will support commercialization and expansion to the U.S. Founded in 2013, it is based in Leeds, England, UK.

Table

Company	Sector	Amount Raised (M, USD)	Funding Type	HQ	Month
Rapidus	Manufacturing	$1,700.0	Strategic	Japan	Feb 2026
Cerebras Systems	AI HW	$1,000.0	Series H	USA	Feb 2026
Ayar Labs	Photonics & Optics	$500.0	Series E	USA	Mar 2026
MatX	AI HW	$500.0	Series B	USA	Feb 2026
Rebellions	AI HW	$400.0	Pre-IPO	South Korea	Mar 2026
Pasqal	Quantum	$396.1	Mixed	France	Mar 2026
SambaNova	AI HW	$350.0	Series E	USA	Feb 2026
Ricursive Intelligence	EDA	$300.0	Series A	USA	Jan 2026
Axelera AI	AI HW	$250.0	Venture	Netherlands	Feb 2026
Positron AI	AI HW	$230.0	Series B	USA	Feb 2026
Kandou AI	Network & Interconnect	$225.0	Strategic	Switzerland	Mar 2026
Olix	Photonics & Optics	$220.0	Series A	UK	Feb 2026
Eridu	Network & Interconnect	$200.0	Series A	USA	Mar 2026
Upscale AI	Network & Interconnect	$200.0	Series A	USA	Jan 2026
Taalas	AI HW	$169.0	Venture	Canada	Feb 2026
Frore Systems	Thermal Management	$143.0	Series D	USA	Mar 2026
Photonic Inc.	Quantum	$130.0	Venture	Canada	Jan 2026
Neurophos	AI HW	$110.0	Series A	USA	Jan 2026
Ethernovia	Automotive	$90.0	Series B	USA	Jan 2026
Primemas	Processors & SoCs	$72.0	Series B	USA	Jan 2026
Accelsius	Thermal Management	$65.0	Series B	USA	Jan 2026
Efficient Computer	Processors & SoCs	$60.0	Series A	USA	Feb 2026
Equal1	Quantum	$60.0	Venture	Ireland	Jan 2026
IQM Quantum Computers	Quantum	$57.4	Debt	Finland	Mar 2026
Monarch Quantum	Quantum	$55.0	Venture	USA	Mar 2026
ChipAgents	EDA	$50.0	Series A+	USA	Feb 2026
Eliyan Corporation	Network & Interconnect	$50.0	Strategic	USA	Jan 2026
Mesh Optical Technologies	Photonics & Optics	$50.0	Series A	USA	Feb 2026
Normal Computing	EDA	$50.0	Strategic	USA	Mar 2026
Vertical Compute	Memory & Storage	$42.9	Seed	Belgium	Mar 2026
Lace Lithography	Equipment	$40.0	Series A	Norway	Mar 2026
Flux	EDA	$37.0	Series A & B	USA	Feb 2026
Xscape Photonics	Photonics & Optics	$37.0	Series A	USA	Mar 2026
GS Microelectronics	Manufacturing	$35.0	Series B	USA	Jan 2026
Optalysys	Security	$31.1	Series A	UK	Jan 2026
AheadComputing	Processors & SoCs	$30.0	Seed	USA	Jan 2026
Amber Semiconductor	Power Semi	$30.0	Series C	USA	Mar 2026
Claros	Power Semi	$30.0	Seed	USA	Mar 2026
Quadric	AI HW	$30.0	Series C	USA	Jan 2026
Elephantech	Manufacturing	$25.2	Strategic	Japan	Mar 2026
The Biological Computing Co. (TBC)	AI HW	$25.0	Seed	USA	Feb 2026
Arycs Technologies	Photonics & Optics	$24.0	Venture	USA	Mar 2026
Qualinx	Sensors	$23.3	Venture	Netherlands	Jan 2026
EPIC Microsystems	Power Semi	$21.0	Series A	USA	Mar 2026
Axiomatic AI	EDA Adjacent	$18.0	Seed	USA	Mar 2026
Mojo Vision	Photonics & Optics	$17.5	Strategic	USA	Mar 2026
C2i Semiconductors	Power Semi	$15.0	Series A	India	Feb 2026
Great Sky	AI HW	$14.0	Seed	USA	Mar 2026
Diraq	Quantum	$13.9	Venture	Australia	Feb 2026
Silicon Quantum Computing	Quantum	$13.9	Venture	Australia	Mar 2026
Flexoo	Sensors	$13.0	Series A	Germany	Feb 2026
Gaianixx	Manufacturing	$12.7	Series C	Japan	Mar 2026
SPARK Microsystems	Wireless	$12.4	Series B	Canada	Mar 2026
Chiral	Equipment	$12.0	Seed	Switzerland	Feb 2026
Femtum	Equipment	$11.8	Series A	Canada	Mar 2026
Vexlum	Photonics & Optics	$11.8	Mixed	Finland	Feb 2026
Vitrealab	AR/VR	$11.0	Series A	Austria	Jan 2026
Anabatic Semiconductor	Power Semi	$10.0	Venture	South Korea	Mar 2026
BeyondMath	EDA Adjacent	$10.0	Seed	UK	Feb 2026
memQ	Quantum	$10.0	Series A	USA	Mar 2026
Vervesemi Microelectronics	AMS	$10.0	Series A	India	Feb 2026
Q*Bird	Quantum	$8.8	Mixed	Netherlands	Jan 2026
Brilliance RGB	AR/VR	$6.9	Venture	Netherlands	Mar 2026
Iceberg Quantum	Quantum	$6.0	Seed	Australia	Feb 2026
Polar Light Technologies	Displays	$5.9	Venture	Sweden	Jan 2026
INCIRT	AMS	$5.6	Seed	Germany	Mar 2026
Photo electron Soul	Equipment	$5.6	Venture	Japan	Mar 2026
AlphaLum	AR/VR	$4.2	Seed	Switzerland	Jan 2026
Quantcore	Quantum	$3.4	Seed	UK	Feb 2026
Lenzo	AI HW	$3.2	Seed	Japan	Mar 2026
Raana Semiconductors (RSPL)	Materials	$3.0	Seed	India	Jan 2026
ThirdAI Automation	Manufacturing	$3.0	Seed	USA	Feb 2026
Sensesemi Technologies	AMS	$2.7	Seed	India	Jan 2026
Agnit Semiconductors	Materials	$2.6	Seed	India	Mar 2026
Myrias Optics	Photonics & Optics	$2.1	Seed	USA	Feb 2026
Ewigbyte	Memory & Storage	$1.9	Pre-Seed	Germany	Feb 2026
optoML	AI HW	$1.8	Pre-A	Singapore	Feb 2026
Tattvam AI	EDA	$1.7	Pre-Seed	UK	Feb 2026
QC82	Quantum	$1.5	Venture	USA	Jan 2026
Rhonexum	Quantum	$1.0	Pre-Seed	Switzerland	Mar 2026