Arago
Category: AI Infrastructure
Energy-efficient photonic chips, powered by light, designed to radically reduce the energy consumption and carbon footprint of artificial intelligence computations. Arago was founded in 2024. The company is led by Nicolas Muller. Based in Paris, France. Team size: Over 30. Total funding raised: $26M total (all rounds). Latest round: Seed. Key investors include Earlybird (Lead), Protagonist (Lead), Visionaries Tomorrow (Lead), Generative IQ, C4 Ventures, Acequia Capital, Bertrand Serlet (former VP at Apple), Christophe Frey (GM at Arm), Olivier Pomel (Co-founder of Datadog), Thomas Wolf (Co-founder of Hugging Face), Jack Abraham.
- Founded
- 2024
- Headquarters
- Paris, France
- Team size
- Over 30
- Total funding
- $26M total (all rounds)
Value proposition
Enables large-scale AI model training and inference with a tenfold reduction in electrical power requirements and cost, without sacrificing performance and while remaining fully compatible with industry-standard software and hardware.
Products and solutions
Photonic Processing Unit (PPU) chipsets (codename 'JEF') for neural network acceleration., Integrated hardware/software stack (CARLOTA) for seamless deployment in existing data center infrastructure., Developer SDKs for easy model porting to Arago’s platform.
Unique value
Arago's proprietary technology uses light to perform core AI computations (matrix multiplications), resulting in a claimed 10x reduction in energy consumption compared to leading GPUs at an equivalent performance and cost. It sidesteps technical barriers that have historically limited other photonic processors.
Target customer
Cloud service providers, hyperscalers, data centers, and enterprises with large-scale AI workloads.
Industries served
Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Infrastructure, Cloud Computing, Data Centers, High Performance Computing (HPC), Edge Computing
Technology advantage
Arago's hybrid architecture, built on the latest industry breakthroughs, is designed to deliver step-change performance gains in the near term. Its software stack, CARLOTA, interfaces with standard AI frameworks like PyTorch, abstracting low-level hardware details and simplifying adoption.
How they differentiate
Arago positions itself as a key transatlantic player focused on reducing total system-level energy use for AI compute. It emphasizes seamless integration with existing software frameworks (e.g., PyTorch) and hardware components from day one, avoiding the need for ecosystem adaptation.
Main competitors
Lightmatter, Lightelligence, Celestial AI, Luminous Computing
Key partnerships
GlobalFoundries (foundry/tape-out), Synopsys, Cadence, Leading European cloud providers (for pilot deployments)
Notable customers
Early pilots underway with undisclosed major European cloud providers.
Major milestones
Secured an oversubscribed €22.1M ($26M) seed round in July 2024. Developed a working prototype demonstrating significant power reduction compared to traditional GPUs. Established a multi-national team with experts from leading tech companies and research labs.
Growth metrics
Team grown to ~40–50 employees (Tracxn 49 as of Jul 2026; PitchBook 41), operating across France, North America, and Israel. First chip tape-out completed Apr 2026; preparing Series A to scale production.
Market positioning
Europe-first go-to-market strategy with a strong presence in North America for global expansion and access to the semiconductor ecosystem.
Geographic focus
Europe and North America
Patents and IP
Filed multiple patents covering its optical computing architecture, hybrid photonic-electronic integration, and software stack (details pending publication).
About Nicolas Muller
Nicolas Muller is the Co-Founder and CEO of Arago, a position he has held since January 2023. Before Arago, he co-founded Chipiron, a company developing a new generation of DNA printers. He also has experience in finance as an Investment Banking Analyst at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
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Official website: https://www.arago.inc/