Salience Labs raises £125m series b led by Bullhound Capital with AMD Ventures
This article covers Salience Labs, a hardware startup that has raised £125m in a series B funding round to accelerate production and deployment of its silicon photonics switches for AI datacentre connectivity. The funding will support scaling volume manufacturing, developing larger-port optical circuit switches and expanding the startup’s US presence, targeting datacentre operators seeking greater bandwidth, lower latency and improved energy efficiency for AI infrastructure.
Salience Labs has raised £125m in a series B funding round to accelerate production and deployment of its silicon photonics switches for AI datacenter connectivity. The funding will be used to scale volume manufacturing, push larger-port optical circuit switches, and expand the company’s US presence in Silicon Valley — moves that matter as datacentre operators seek new ways to connect thousands of GPUs with lower power and latency.
Why it matters
AI models are driving fresh demands on datacentre networks: more bandwidth, lower latency and better energy efficiency between racks and GPU clusters. Salience Labs is pitching an all-optical switch architecture that replaces electronic switching for some back-end datacentre traffic, a change proponents say could reduce bottlenecks that limit performance and increase cost and power use.
The timing is notable. Industry forecasts such as Dell’Oro Group’s estimate of roughly $1 trillion in cumulative spending on datacentre switches for next-generation AI infrastructure between 2026 and 2030 underline the scale of the opportunity, while the company’s technical demo and manufacturing plans point to a practical path to market.
Inside the product
Salience Labs develops an on-chip, all-optical circuit switching (OCS) architecture intended to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks. The company demonstrated a 64-port all-optical photonic switch at ECOC 2026 — a public milestone that it describes as an industry first for silicon photonics OCS — and says the next steps are 128- and 256-port systems aimed at larger, performance-critical environments.
The technology combines integrated silicon photonics with proprietary optical amplification, according to the company, and is designed for high-volume manufacturing in partnership with firms such as Keysight Technologies and Tower Semiconductor. Salience Labs also plans to expand its Silicon Valley footprint with an additional West Coast office to support customer engagement and US sales.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Bullhound Capital, with Principal Callum Stewart joining the Salience Labs board. Other participants include corporate venture arms AMD Ventures and Intel Capital, strategic backers SBI Group and Hudson River Trading, and public and development investors such as British Business Bank. Existing shareholders that took part include Applied Ventures LLC, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures.
In the announcement, Callum Stewart, Principal at Bullhound Capital, said:
The investor base and customer relationships Salience Labs has developed really speak to the capability of the leadership: Vaysh has assembled a strong team fully focused on designing a switch architecture that both aligns with customers' near-term roadmaps but also scales with them far into the future. Bullhound Capital is proud to back this transformational company that is bringing to reality the next generation of high-performance data centers
In the announcement, Patrick Rundell, Director at AMD Ventures, said:
AI infrastructure is increasingly being designed at rack scale, where networking has a direct impact on system performance, efficiency and economics. Salience Labs is developing a differentiated, integrated optical switching architecture aimed at addressing these challenges, and AMD Ventures is pleased to support the team as it scales its technology and manufacturing capabilities
In the announcement, Srini Ananth, Managing Director at Intel Capital, said:
Photonics is quickly becoming essential to scaling AI infrastructure, and optical circuit switching can unlock significant gains in performance and efficiency. Salience Labs stands out through its integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification, addressing key challenges to deploying optical switching at scale
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Vaysh Kewada, CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs, said:
OCS will play a critical role in AI datacenter networking. As customers roll out optical links in their datacenters, high-performance optical switches are needed to deliver the token economics that workloads demand. Salience Labs has demonstrated a market-leading technology: a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well to high-volume manufacturing. This funding, alongside the support of our investors AMD Ventures and Intel Capital, will accelerate our growth into high-volume production to enable world-leading performance in AI data centers
Kewada’s statement summarises the company’s immediate priorities: transition from demo to manufacturing, broaden customer engagements in the US, and deliver larger-port products to address rack-scale networking needs.
The bigger picture
The financing underscores continued investor interest in hardware solutions for AI infrastructure, particularly approaches that combine photonics and manufacturing scale to tackle bandwidth and power constraints. Participation from both corporate VCs such as AMD Ventures and Intel Capital and public backers like British Business Bank signals a mix of strategic and policy-aligned support for deeptech hardware that can be manufactured at scale.
Salience Labs’ partnerships with testing and foundry firms point to the practical challenges of ramping production for silicon photonics — a recurring theme in European and UK deeptech: moving from lab demos to reliable, high-volume supply chains. The involvement of UK-based investors such as Oxford Science Enterprises and Cambridge Innovation Capital also highlights domestic capital backing for hardware innovation with global market ambitions.
The round is part of a broader pattern in which startups building datacentre hardware are attracting cross-border capital to meet the urgent needs of AI compute providers across the US and Europe.
They've invested in Salience Labs
Get to know these hardware investors
| Investors | Investment Focus | Startup Investments | Round Size | Connect |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Bullhound Capital( ) Luxembourg, Luxembourg | Series BGrowth | |||
AMD Ventures( ) | Series BGrowth | |||
 Intel Capital( ) | Series BGrowth | |||
 British Business Bank( ) The British Business Bank focuses on enhancing finance accessibility for smaller... Sheffield  | ||||
 Applied Ventures LLC( ) | Series BGrowth | |||
 Oxford Science Enterprises( ) The firm focuses on investing in Life Sciences, Health Tech, and Deep Tech, prim... Oxford | ||||
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 Silicon Catalyst Ventures( ) | Series BGrowth | |||
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