Tiger Global Leads $65 Million Round in Avicena

<p><strong>SUNNYVALE<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Avicena&comma; a developer of ultra-low power high-density microLED-based interconnects&comma; has raised &dollar;65 million in Series B Funding&comma; bringing the total capital raised to &dollar;120 million&period; The round was led by Tiger Global with participation from new and existing investors including Maverick Silicon&comma; Prosperity7 Ventures&comma; Venture Tech Alliance&comma; SK hynix&comma; Cerberus Capital Management&comma; Hitachi Ventures and Lam Research&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;This highly oversubscribed funding round is another testament that Avicena is in a leading position to disrupt the AI interconnect market&comma; and reflects the magnitude of business opportunity before us&comma;” said Bardia Pezeshki&comma; Founder and CEO of Avicena&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We will use the new funds to further scale our team and ramp our first product into production&period; Our LightBundle microLED-based interconnects provide superior bandwidth density&comma; energy efficiency&comma; reliability and cost compared to all other optical interconnect technologies&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Artificial intelligence &lpar;AI&rpar; is driving an unprecedented surge in demand for compute and memory performance&period; Avicena’s groundbreaking LightBundle technology is based on arrays of GaN microLEDs that leverage the large display ecosystem and can be integrated directly onto any high-performance CMOS IC&period; The microLED transmit arrays are coupled into multi-fiber cables which connect to matching arrays of integrated silicon detectors&comma; enabling class-leading optical interconnects which provide superior performance&comma; reliability and cost compared to laser-based solutions&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Avicena’s unique technology has transformative potential for improving the bandwidth and reducing the power consumption of AI computing systems&comma;” says Rohit Iragavarapu&comma; Partner at Tiger Global&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We are excited to be investing behind them and their vision for a better AI interconnect&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Energy-efficient optical interconnects are becoming a major topic in the architecture of next generation disaggregated memory fabrics&comma;” says Rene Do&comma; Senior Director&comma; Venture Investment&comma; SK hynix&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Since high speed electrical interconnects have fundamental reach limitations&comma; and laser-based optical links are too power hungry&comma; microLED-based interconnects like Avicena’s LightBundle represent a very promising solution for low power links in future memory fabrics&period; We are excited to join this round and potentially collaborate with the Avicena team on the development of next generation memory interconnects&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;