PicoJool Raises $27.5 Million Series A to Scale Optical Connectivity for AI Infrastructure

Round led by Socratic Partners, with participation from HRT, builds on prior backing from Playground Global and will accelerate commercialization of PicoJool’s 200G, 50G microVCSELs, and optical connectivity products

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PicoJool, a pioneer in optical connectivity for AI infrastructure, announced it has raised $27.5 million in Series A funding led by Socratic Partners, with participation from Hudson River Trading (HRT). The financing follows a $12M seed round led by Playground Global and brings the company’s total funding to $39.5 million.

PicoJool will use the funding to expand its teams and facilities in the United States and Taiwan as it brings its Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) and optical link products to market. The company plans to grow its research and development, operations, sales and marketing organizations while building the capacity needed to qualify, manufacture and support its products for hyperscalers and data center operators.

“Reaching 200G per lane proved that the performance is there. Our focus now is execution,” said Al Yuen, founder and CEO of PicoJool. “This funding allows us to expand our teams in the U.S. and Taiwan, qualify products with customers and move a complete portfolio from chip-level VCSELs and microVCSELs into AOC and NPO modules. We are building the connectivity platform customers will need for the next decade of AI infrastructure.”

AI clusters are increasing both the number of processors in a system and the volume of data moving between them, placing growing pressure on interconnect performance and data center power budgets. PicoJool is applying the cost and manufacturing advantages of VCSEL technology to a portfolio of optical connectivity products designed to scale from 800G to 1.6T, 3.2T and beyond. The company is also seeing growing customer interest in its microVCSEL products, including 50G NRZ configuration for optical compute interconnects and 64G NRZ/PAM4 configurations for PCIe 6.0 - based NPO applications. PicoJool has started early sampling of its chip-level VCSEL products ahead of broader availability.

PicoJool’s portfolio includes high-speed VCSEL (100G, 200G) products and lower-power microVCSEL (50G NRZ, 64G NRZ/PAM4) configurations. The microVCSEL platform uses a massively parallel architecture to increase aggregate bandwidth while reducing the energy required to move each bit of data, addressing a critical constraint for hyperscale AI systems.

"Moving data efficiently dictates how quickly and economically AI scales," said Greg Waters, General Partner at Socratic Partners. "PicoJool combines a proven team with a unique approach that brings VCSEL technology's cost and manufacturing advantages to AI-scale bandwidth and power needs. They are poised to become a vital connectivity platform for next-generation data centers."

The Series A follows the June unveiling of PicoJool’s 200G VCSEL and microVCSEL product family for scale-up AI data centers. The 200G products exceed 37GHz of bandwidth, and the portfolio includes quad 100G, quad 200G and 32x50G NRZ microVCSEL configurations that give customers multiple paths to 1.6T connectivity based on their bandwidth, power and system requirements.

“The network is the AI, and connectivity is becoming one of the defining constraints on performance. The industry needs a solution that can increase bandwidth while sharply improving power and cost,” said Pat Gelsinger, general partner at Playground Global. “PicoJool brings together breakthrough VCSEL performance, deep systems expertise and a manufacturing base capable of supporting tremendous scale. The team is well positioned to move quickly from an important technical milestone to products that can reshape how AI infrastructure moves data.”

PicoJool is working with WIN Semiconductor and other gallium arsenide (GaAs) foundries to ready its 200G VCSELs for production. WIN has shipped more than one billion chips over the past decade, bringing significant high-volume manufacturing experience to this work as PicoJool prepares its products for qualification and production. The company is also working with system companies and hyperscalers to define next-generation pluggable, NPO and co-packaged optics solutions.

About PicoJool

PicoJool is developing next-generation optical chips and modules for high-bandwidth, low-cost connectivity in hyperscale AI data centers. Founded by photonics industry veteran Al Yuen, the company is advancing optical communication from the semiconductor through the transceiver and system level. PicoJool is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with research and development and operations in the United States and Taiwan. Learn more at www.picojool.com.