Ottawa-based Hyperlume, which develops optical interconnects for artificial intelligence (AI) data centres, has been sold to San Jose, Calif.-based semiconductor company Credo. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Credo, which trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange with a $25-billion USD market cap, said the acquisition of Hyperlume’s micro light-emitting diode (microLED) technology can address the future of AI-driven data infrastructure. Credo said that escalating bandwidth demands are changing the way that data is transmitted in data centers, and MicroLED technology can help scale “massive AI clusters.”
Hyperlume is the latest Canadian semiconductor startup to be swallowed up by a larger American player.
“MicroLED technology aligns with our mission to innovate and advance high-speed connectivity by enabling faster, more reliable, more energy-efficient, and scalable solutions for the AI era,” Credo president and CEO Bill Brennan said in a statement. “We welcome the Hyperlume team to Credo and look forward to creating a new class of connectivity solutions together.”
Founded in 2022 by CEO Mohsen Asad and president and CTO Hossein Fariborzi, Hyperlume aims to address connectivity bottlenecks in accelerated computing and AI data centres with its specialized microLEDs (a type of emerging flat-panel display technology) and power circuitry. BetaKit has reached out for more details on the transaction. For his part, Asad announced on LinkedIn that he is now Credo’s senior director of core technology.
The deal comes approximately seven months after Hyperlume closed $12.5 million USD in seed funding to commercialize its technology. The round was co-led by Canadian Crown corporation BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, as well as Toronto-based climate tech investor ArcTern Ventures, with support from United States-based MUUS Climate Partners and SOSV, and the venture capital arms of American chipmaker Intel and South Korean consumer electronics giant LG.
Hyperlume claims its microLED-based optical interconnects are both faster and more energy efficient than other available options. It claims its interconnects offer 10 times the computing performance and quintuple the power savings at one-quarter the cost of traditional copper interconnects.
RELATED: Hyperlume raises $17.8-million seed round to commercialize its AI data centre tech
Data centre interconnects link two or more data centres together to share and transfer data over varying distances. In the AI era, data centre use—and thus energy consumption—has skyrocketed. Goldman Sachs expects that AI will drive a 165-percent increase in data centre power demand by 2030.
Hyperlume’s website notes that existing AI models are already pushing the limits of traditional interconnects. It argues that scaling the next generation will require much greater connectivity and significantly reduced power consumption.
Hyperlume joins a growing list of promising Canadian semiconductor startups like CentML, Tenstorrent, and Untether AI that have either moved south or been swallowed up by larger American players in recent years.
Feature image courtesy Hyperlume.