iPronics raises USD $125 million for AI optical switching

iPronics has raised USD $125 million in Series B funding in a round co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital, with participation from NVIDIA.

The financing brings the optical networking company's total funding to USD $177 million and comes as demand grows for networking systems built for artificial intelligence data centres.

iPronics plans to use the money to expand operations, increase commercial deployment and meet demand for its Optical Networking Engine, or ONE, a rack-mounted optical switch designed for AI workloads.

Founded in 2019 as a spin-out from Universitat Politècnica de València, the company develops optical circuit switching technology based on silicon photonics. Its system is designed to provide a programmable optical layer in AI clusters, allowing connectivity to be reconfigured in real time for training and inference tasks.

The investor group included new and existing backers. Alongside Maverick Silicon, Light Street Capital and NVIDIA, participants included Triatomic Capital, Bosch Ventures, Catalight Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, The Tate Family Trust, Fine Structure Ventures, Amadeus Capital Partners, Build Collective and Criteria Venture Tech.

Alongside the fund-raising, iPronics has opened an office in Santa Clara, California, as it expands its US presence. It is hiring staff to support product strategy, customer deployments and partnerships tied to AI infrastructure.

Market shift

Optical circuit switching is drawing increased attention in AI networking as operators build larger clusters and seek alternatives to copper-based links. The broader shift towards optical interconnects reflects growing pressure on bandwidth, power use and network design as AI computing systems scale up.

iPronics says this trend is driving demand for denser optical switching products for scale-up networking inside AI data centres. Its platform is intended to help operators expand computing capacity while managing cost, power consumption and system complexity.

Chief Executive Officer Christian Dupont outlined the company's position following the funding round.

"Securing this support from Maverick Silicon, Light Street Capital and NVIDIA strengthens our vision as we build iPronics into a new class of optical networking leaders," said Christian Dupont, Chief Executive Officer of iPronics.

"With this investment, we can significantly accelerate our commercialization, delivering the scale our customers need to drive broad adoption and ensuring data centers can fully utilize their GPUs without compromising performance," Dupont said.

Maverick Silicon is also taking a board seat as part of the deal. Manish Muthal, Senior Managing Director at the firm, has joined the iPronics board of directors.

"The explosive growth of AI workloads has pushed traditional network infrastructure to its power and bandwidth limits, making optical circuit switching more critical than ever," said Manish Muthal, Senior Managing Director at Maverick Silicon.

"We're proud to co-lead this round and partner with the iPronics team as they expand commercial deployments worldwide," Muthal said.

Light Street Capital is also adding board representation through Geoffrey Tate, an adviser to the investment firm, who is joining the board. Tate previously held senior roles at AMD and Rambus and was most recently Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flex Logix.

"Light Street is excited to co-lead this Series B," said Shef Osborn, Partner at Light Street Capital.

"We believe iPronics offers the most scalable and cost-effective approach to solid-state optical switching at the interconnect layer, a critical requirement for meeting AI compute demand over the next decade," Osborn said.

Advisory support

The company is also adding Young Sohn of Catalight Capital as an adviser. Sohn previously served as Corporate President and Chief Strategy Officer at Samsung and Chief Executive Officer of Inphi, and he sits on the boards of Arm and Cadence Design Systems.

"Next-generation AI infrastructure will require a more dynamic, optical-first network fabric," said Young Sohn, Founding Member of Catalight Capital.

"iPronics' approach to programmable optical switching can help data centers scale performance while managing power and cost. I am honored to support the company as it accelerates commercialization," Sohn said.

Founder and Chief Technology Officer Daniel Pérez-López said the latest financing reflects progress in proving the technology with partners.

"This Series B is a testament to our team's relentless execution," said Dr. Daniel Pérez-López, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of iPronics.

"Together with our tier-one partners, we are successfully demonstrating that we can build and deploy this technology at scale for AI infrastructure," Pérez-López said.