Oxford U.K. // Salience Labs has raised a seed round of $11.5 million to develop an ultra high-speed multi-chip processor combining photonics and electronics to accelerate exponential advances in AI. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital and Oxford Science Enterprises, with Oxford Investment Consultants, former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor Jalal Bagherli, Silicon Catalyst, the Goh Family Office from Singapore and Arm-backed Deeptech Labs participating.

The speed of AI computation doubles every 3.4 months, outpacing what standard semiconductor technologies have left to offer. Meanwhile, AI hardware is moving away from general purpose applications in response to market demands which are increasingly verticalized by use-case. To accelerate exponential advances in AI across industries, a new paradigm for compute – one that is both faster and highly application-specific – is now required.

Salience Labs was spun-out of the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in 2021 to commercialise an ultra high-speed multi-chip processor that packages a photonics chip together with standard electronics. The technology is highly scalable, capable of stacking up to 64 vectors into a beam of light. By using a broad bandwidth of light to execute operations, Salience Labs delivers massively parallel processing performance within a given power envelope.

Salience Labs uses a proprietary amplitude-based approach to photonics, resulting in dense computing chips clocking at 10’s of GHz. This, combined with massively parallel performance, will enable exascale compute in a wide array of new and existing AI processes and applications.

The company leverages multi-chip design, with the photonic processing mapping directly on top of the Static Random Access Memory (SRAM). This novel ‘on-memory compute’ architecture is inherently faster and can be adapted to the application-specific requirements of different market verticals, making it ideal for realizing AI use-cases in communications, robotics, vision systems, healthcare and other data workloads.

Salience Labs’ technology has been designed from first principles for volume manufacture and is currently fabricating with production-level foundries using standard CMOS processes.

Ian Lane, Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital said, “Salience Labs brings together deep domain expertise in photonics, electronics and CMOS manufacture. Their unique approach to photonics delivers an exceedingly dense computing chip without having to scale the photonics chip to large sizes.”

Alexis Zervoglos, Partner, Oxford Science Enterprises said, “Salience Labs offers a pioneering yet pragmatic solution to the widening gap between AI processing demand and semiconductor industry supply. By leveraging photonics in a novel way, Salience Labs is set to make unprecedented advances in compute, transforming existing AI applications and opening up new addressable horizons.”

Jalal Bagherli, Salience Labs investor and former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor (acq. 2021, Renesas Electronics Corporation, $5.7 billon) said, “The team at Salience Labs is world-class, combining commercial and technical acumen with a disruptive market vision. Their unique ‘on-memory compute’ architecture is ground-breaking, with the potential for breakthrough performance and power capability beyond what the established CMOS roadmap offers.”

Vaysh Kewada, CEO and co-founder of Salience Labs said, “The world needs ever faster chips to grow AI capability, but the semiconductor industry cannot keep pace with this demand. We’re solving this with our proprietary ‘on-memory compute’ architecture which combines the ultra-fast speed of photonics, the flexibility of electronics and the manufacturability of CMOS. This will usher in a new era of processing, where supercompute AI becomes ubiquitous.”

Editors Notes

About Salience Labs

Founded in 2021, Salience Labs is developing an ultra high-speed multi-chip processor that packages a photonics chip together with standard electronics. By using light to execute operations, Salience Labs delivers massively parallel, ultra-high throughput processing performance on a single chip – bringing power-efficient exascale compute to a wide array of new and existing AI processes and applications.

The company is headquartered in Oxford, UK and funded by a portfolio of investors including Cambridge Innovation Capital, Oxford Sciences Enterprises, Oxford Investment Consultants, Silicon Catalyst, Deeptech Labs and leaders from the global semiconductor industry including former CEO of Dialog Semiconductor Jalal Bagherli and the Goh Family Office in Singapore.

About Cambridge Innovation Capital 

Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) is a leading venture investor backing and building category-leading deep tech and life sciences companies. CIC currently manages more than £300 million and has invested in 30+ companies. CIC is a preferred investor for the University of Cambridge, Europe’s top source of founders for venture-backed start-ups.

Cambridge Innovation Capital Manager Limited (FRN:918898) is authorised and regulated by the financial Conduct Authority.

About Oxford Science Enterprises

We are Oxford Science Enterprises, the Science Business Builder. We want to help solve the world’s toughest problems for more people, in more places, faster. We do this by transforming world-leading science into world-changing businesses, partnering the best scientists from the world’s best university with the best business brains. We grow our companies with care and expertise; in a way that is systematic and scalable. We invest for real-world impact, not only financial returns. And we re-invest proceeds back into the next generation of original research and world-changing businesses.

Our enterprises address problems that affect people in life-changing ways: their health, the availability of food, the survival of the planet. Since 2015, we have received an automatic stake in all Oxford University science spinouts – more than 100 businesses founded by over 200 of Oxford’s leading academics. We have taken a leading role in creating and building over 70 of these, adding +55,000 sq ft of lab & start-up space to support them. Today our businesses are worth over £2bn and have created +2,000 jobs.

About Deeptech Labs

Deeptech Labs is a VC fund, accelerator, and the catalyst for deeptech success. Twice a year, its cohort of start-ups are embedded in a powerful network of successful entrepreneurs, expert practitioners, leading researchers, and deeptech organisations worldwide. Deeptech Labs is founded by ARM, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Martlet Capital, and the University of Cambridge – forefront institutions at the heart of the Cambridge and global technology ecosystems. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, UK.

About Silicon Catalyst

It’s About What’s Next® – Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating solutions in silicon (including IP, MEMS & sensors), building a coalition of in-kind and strategic partners to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of development. More than 600 startup companies worldwide have engaged with Silicon Catalyst and we have admitted 46 exciting companies. Silicon Power Technology, our Chengdu Joint Venture, has admitted 35 additional startups in China. With a world-class network of mentors to advise startups, Silicon Catalyst is helping new semiconductor companies address the challenges in moving from idea to realization. The incubator/accelerator supplies startups with a path to design tools, silicon devices, networking, access to funding, banking and marketing acumen to successfully launch and grow their companies’ novel technology solutions. Silicon Catalyst has been named the Semiconductor Review’s 2021 Top-10 Solutions Company award winner. The Silicon Catalyst Angels was established in July 2019 as a separate organization to provide access to seed and Series A funding for Silicon Catalyst portfolio companies.