Salience Labs raises $125 million to put optical switches inside AI data centers

Salience Labs, the Oxford and Münster spin-out building photonic optical circuit switches for AI networking, announced an oversubscribed $125 million Series B on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026, led by Bullhound Capital with AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank among the new money.

AI clusters are starting to choke on the wires between GPUs, not just the chips themselves. Salience is betting light can replace the electronic switch fabric — and Intel and AMD just put money on that bet in the same round. A $125 million Series B after a 64-port optical demo is the networking layer of the AI factory asking for its own capital markets day.

Salience Labs announced an oversubscribed $125 million Series B led by Bullhound Capital. A Series B is a later round of venture funding, after earlier money, for a company raising to build and sell. Principal Callum Stewart of Bullhound is joining the Salience Labs board. The company did not disclose a valuation. Those lines are Salience's.

New investors: AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank, which is putting in £10 million, per the Bank. Existing investors: Applied Ventures LLC, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures. Those names are Salience's. The £10 million is the British Business Bank's.

The company was founded in 2021. Headquarters are in Oxford. Research roots are the University of Oxford and the University of Münster. It builds photonic optical circuit switching, shortened to OCS, for AI datacenter networking. Photonic means the data moves as light. An optical circuit switch steers that light instead of an electronic switch pushing electrical signals. Those lines are Salience's.

The money will accelerate OCS deployment, scale volume manufacturing, and expand the US presence in Silicon Valley with a second West Coast office. Salience says it will continue with Keysight Technologies and Tower Semiconductor for manufacturing scale. Those uses are Salience's.

Salience showed a live demo of a 64-port all-optical photonic switch at ECOC 2026, described as an industry first for silicon photonics OCS. The funding is meant to enable future 128- and 256-port OCS products. Those lines are Salience's.

CEO and co-founder Vaysh Kewada said optical circuit switching is critical as customers roll out optical links, and described “a fully integrated on-chip solution that scales well to high-volume manufacturing.” That quotation is hers, on Salience's announcement.

AMD Ventures' Patrick Rundell said AI infrastructure is designed at rack scale, and that networking hits performance, efficiency and economics. Intel Capital's Srini Ananth said photonics is essential, and pointed to Salience's “integrated silicon photonics architecture and proprietary optical amplification.” Those quotations are theirs, on Salience's announcement.

The release cites Dell'Oro: cumulative spending on datacenter switches in AI back-end networks approaching $1 trillion over 2026–2030, with scale-up more than half by 2030. Scale-up, here, is the high-bandwidth links that let accelerators act like one larger computer. That $1 trillion line is Dell'Oro's, as Salience cites it.

Salience will showcase the technology at the PECC Summit in Sunnyvale, Oct. 20–21. That date is Salience's.

The picture is Salience Labs' optical circuit-switch photonic chip on a green board with fiber ribbon arrays attached, labeled Salience. It is the company's photograph from the Series B announcement. The frame does not print a calendar date.

In plain terms, an Oxford photonics company said on Wednesday that it raised $125 million, led by Bullhound, with AMD and Intel's venture arms in the same round, after showing a 64-port all-optical switch. The money is for manufacturing, a bigger US office, and larger switches. The company did not print a valuation.