Last year, San Jose-based semiconductor firm Credo acquired Hyperlume, an early-stage Ottawa startup that developed optical interconnects for AI data centres.
Credo is currently hiring for seven technical roles in Ottawa, Hyperlume’s home turf.
When the deal was announced in October, the financial details were not disclosed. Nasdaq-listed Credo said at the time that it thought Hyperlume’s micro light-emitting diode (microLED) tech could help the company deliver the AI infrastructure of the future.
Last month, Credo revealed in a fiscal Q3 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it paid approximately $92 million USD ($128 million CAD) in cash to buy all equity interest in Hyperlume on Sept. 29, 2025. Given the nearly $9.5 million USD in cash and equivalents that Credo secured from Hyperlume as part of the deal, the net purchase price came out to just over $82.5 million USD (about $115 million CAD).
Founded in 2022 by CEO Mohsen Asad and president and CTO Hossein Fariborzi, Hyperlume had been working to address energy and bandwidth bottlenecks in AI data centres with its specialized microLEDs (a type of emerging flat-panel display technology) and power circuitry. Hyperlume claimed its interconnects had tenfold the computing performance, quintuple the power savings, and cost four-times less than their traditional copper predecessors.
The startup’s acquisition by Credo came about seven months after Hyperlume closed $12.5 million USD in seed funding to commercialize its tech. That round was co-led by Canadian Crown corporation BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, as well as Toronto climate tech investor ArcTern Ventures, with support from US-based MUUS Climate Partners and SOSV, and the venture capital arms of US chipmaker Intel and South Korean consumer electronics giant LG. It is unclear how much in total funding Hyperlume had raised prior to this deal.
Credo, an 18-year-old company that provides chips and cables to AI data centres, has seen its sales and shares soar over the past two years amid the AI boom. The firm hopes to build on that growth with the help of Hyperlume’s tech and team, which joined as part of the deal.
Hyperlume is one of multiple promising Canadian AI chip startups to move south or get snapped up by larger American players, a group that also includes CentML, Tenstorrent, and Untether AI. Industry leaders who BetaKit spoke with and heard from last October view this activity as a positive sign, but also fear that Canada is not doing enough to support its own domestic chip firms and ensure the country fully realizes the benefits of its innovation.
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Niraj Mathur, co-founder and CEO of Ottawa AI chip developer Blumind, said at the time that this activity has led to greater investment in startups like his, and anticipates that US buyers that maintain operations in Canada will produce more spinoffs down the road.
Asad predicted to BetaKit last year that this would hold true for Hyperlume, as Credo has retained Hyperlume’s operations in Ottawa and intends to scale its presence in Canada. He argued deals like this will keep and create more cutting-edge Canadian tech jobs and nourish greater domestic entrepreneurship down the road.
Credo’s careers page indicates that the chip company is currently hiring for seven technical roles in Ottawa.
Diane Vanasse, Credo’s vice-president of marketing communications, told BetaKit over email that the integration of the two companies has been going “great,” describing the Hyperlume folks as “an amazing team working on some of the most challenging interconnect problems.”
Since snapping up Hyperlume, Credo has struck deals to buy two more players in the semiconductor space: California-based CoMira Solutions and Israel’s DustPhotonics.
Feature image courtesy Hyperlume.