Solinide closes €4M to commercialise photonic chips for AI data centres

Swedish deeptech company Solinide Photonics has raised €4 million in seed funding to commercialise its silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit technology and prepare for scalable manufacturing. The round was co-led by Navigare Ventures and PSV Hafnium, with participation from Chalmers Ventures, Turbine Capital, Norrsken Evolve and Almi Greentech Fund. A spin-out from Chalmers University of Technology, Solinide develops photonic chips and microcomb technology for optical interconnects, addressing the growing amount of data that needs to move between chips in AI data centres without a corresponding increase in power consumption. As AI infrastructure scales, data centres require increasingly high-bandwidth connections between processors and other computing hardware. Conventional optical systems typically rely on multiple individual lasers to transmit data, adding to their power consumption, cost and physical footprint. Solinide’s technology replaces multiple laser sources with a single chip capable of generating dozens of precise wavelengths of light simultaneously. These multi-wavelength sources allow more data to travel through each optical fibre while reducing the energy consumption, cost and footprint of optical connections. The company’s technology sits at the intersection of photonics, semiconductors, AI infrastructure and energy efficiency, with potential applications across AI data centres, telecommunications and other markets requiring high-capacity optical communications. According to Solinide, its microcomb technology has demonstrated the performance required for data centre links and has been integrated into a rack-mounted system. The company is now working towards commercial readiness and real-world deployment. Solinide has demonstrated that its microcomb technology can achieve the performance required for datacentre links and deliver an integrated rack-mounted product. A key priority now is preparing for commercial readiness, launch and real-world deployment with the aim of sharing product news very shortly, said Marcello Girardo, CEO of Solinide Photonics. The funding will support the expansion of Solinide’s engineering and commercial teams, strengthen its in-house prototyping capabilities and prepare the technology for manufacturing in Europe. The company also plans to deepen collaboration with strategic industry partners as it works towards market adoption.