Peak XV, EDBI join $700m funding round of AI startup Lumilens

Lumilens, a US-based AI infrastructure startup, has emerged from stealth and announced a $700 million funding round backed by Peak XV, EDBI, and several other investors. The financing, which values Lumilens at $5.51 billion, was co-led by Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech, Seligman Ventures, and Spark Capital, the company announced. Other participants in the round included Addition, Alkeon, HarbourVest, JP Morgan Private Capital, Mayfield, MVP Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Seifdune. EDBI, the corporate investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, also participated in the Series C, alongside Lingotto and Thomvest Ventures, among others. The funding announcement coincides with Lumilens emerging from stealth, two years after its founding to address connectivity bottlenecks in artificial intelligence data centres. Lumilens was founded in early 2024 by CEO Ankur Singla, who previously founded infrastructure companies Contrail Systems and Volterra, which were acquired by Juniper Networks and F5, respectively. The startup develops near-package and co-packaged optics, as well as pluggable optical transceivers. Its products are built on LumiCore, an in-house platform spanning silicon photonics, mixed-signal integrated circuits, electrical-optical interposers and optical systems. The company said it will use the fresh capital to expand its silicon, systems, software, process engineering, and high-volume manufacturing operations.