Volantis raises $88M Series A to bet on photonic inference chips
Early-stage cash is in but valuation is undisclosed, performance figures are the company's own, and shipping starts next year.
Volantis announced on October 1 that it has raised an $88 million Series A led by angel investor Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with John Doerr and former Intel AI products head Naveen Rao among the participants.
The startup is building an inference chip with an optical memory interconnect: wiring that reaches beyond 200 millimeters lets it attach more than 220 memory chiplets, which the company says yields over 30 times the memory bandwidth of current accelerators. It plans to ship the A-1, an appliance about a third of a standard rack, next year.
The bandwidth and token-throughput figures are the company's own, and valuation and terms were not disclosed. CEO Tapa Ghosh wrote in a company blog post that the goal is a coding agent finishing a task in 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes — a claim that awaits real hardware.
Sources:https://siliconangle.com/2026/10/01/volantis-raises-88m-to-develop-photonic-inference-systems