Lumilens

Lumilens provides next-generation photonic interconnect solutions engineered to address the escalating connectivity demands of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The company designs, manufactures, and sells a portfolio of optical interconnect products that enable hyperscalers to expand GPU clusters and build denser compute nodes for both scale-out and scale-up architectures. Founded in 2024 by CEO Ankur Singla, David Friedman, Ritesh Kapahi, and Samuel Liu, Lumilens was created to resolve the limitations of existing electrical and legacy optical interconnects, which are struggling to keep pace with the explosive growth of AI workloads. The leadership team possesses extensive experience in photonics and system-level infrastructure design from roles at companies such as Cisco, Juniper, Meta, Lumentum, and Coherent. The company asserts that as AI models expand, the primary constraint has shifted from compute availability to the ability to interconnect GPUs efficiently. Lumilens's product portfolio includes high-density pluggable, near-packaged, and co-packaged optics, facilitated by its in-house-developed silicon photonics. This vertical integration aims to provide faster innovation cycles and supply chain stability. A key differentiator is the company's investment in advanced manufacturing facilities that utilize custom robotics and AI-optimized production processes to enhance product yield and quality. The firm is developing 800G and 1.6T optical transceivers for AI networking. In May 2026, Lumilens entered a strategic partnership with POET Technologies to develop an Electrical-Optical Interposer (EOI), a new class of wafer-level photonic integration designed to bring semiconductor-style manufacturing and scalability to optical engines. The company is headquartered in Belmont, California, and targets the largest AI providers and hyperscalers. As of August 2026, Lumilens had raised over $900 million in total funding, with a Series C round valuing the company at $5.51 billion. The firm is backed by prominent venture capital investors including Mayfield, Spark Capital, Atreides Management, and Bain Capital Ventures. Keywords: photonic interconnects, AI data centers, optical networking, silicon photonics, GPU clusters, scale-out architecture, scale-up architecture, co-packaged optics, near-package optics, Ankur Singla, AI infrastructure, data center connectivity, optical transceivers, high-bandwidth computing, robotics manufacturing, AI manufacturing, Electrical-Optical Interposer, hyperscale computing, advanced packaging, semiconductor manufacturing