Celestial AI
Category: AI Infrastructure
Developer of Photonic Fabric™, an optical interconnect technology platform enabling high-bandwidth, low-latency chip-to-chip and memory disaggregation connectivity for AI/data center infrastructure. Celestial AI was founded in 2020. The company is led by David (Dave) Lazovsky. Based in Santa Clara, California, USA. Team size: 101-500. Total funding raised: $515.0M. Latest round: Acquired. Key investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Temasek (Xora), IAG Capital Partners, AMD, U.S. Innovative Technology Fund (Thomas Tull), Engine Ventures, Maverick Capital, Tiger Global.
- Founded
- 2020
- Headquarters
- Santa Clara, California, USA
- Team size
- 101-500
- Total funding
- $515.0M
Value proposition
Replaces electrical interconnects with optical (photonic) interconnects to overcome bandwidth, latency, and power bottlenecks in AI compute clusters, enabling memory and compute disaggregation at scale.
Products and solutions
Photonic Fabric™ (optical interconnect chiplet platform), Photonic Fabric Switch, Optical Multi-Chip Interconnect (OMCI) for XPU-to-memory and XPU-to-XPU connectivity
Unique value
First to commercialize optical interconnect chiplets co-packaged with custom XPUs and scale-up switches for large-scale AI deployments, validated by existing customer traction pre-acquisition
Target customer
Hyperscalers, AI chip designers, and data center infrastructure providers building next-generation AI compute clusters
Industries served
AI Infrastructure / Semiconductors / Data Center Networking
Technology advantage
Proprietary Photonic Fabric optical interconnect chiplet technology enabling disaggregated memory/compute pools with much higher bandwidth density and lower power than electrical interconnects; deep IP portfolio in silicon photonics
How they differentiate
Focus on memory-side optical disaggregation (not just I/O) via Photonic Fabric chiplets, with demonstrated commercial customer traction ahead of competitors
Main competitors
Ayar Labs, Lightmatter, Broadcom / Nvidia (NVLink) as adjacent electrical/optical alternatives
Key partnerships
imec (advanced R&D collaboration), AMD (strategic investor/partner), Marvell (acquirer, post-acquisition integration into scale-up connectivity roadmap)
Major milestones
2020: Founded, Dec 2021: $56M Series A (KDT), Jun 2023: $100M Series B, Jan 2024: $175M Series C, Mar 2025: $250M Series C1 (total >$515M raised, $2.5B valuation), Dec 2025: Marvell announces definitive agreement to acquire for $3.25B cash-and-stock, Feb 2026: Marvell completes acquisition
Growth metrics
Reached ~$2.5B valuation prior to acquisition; existing customer traction cited by Marvell as basis for large-scale commercial deployment plans
Market positioning
Category leader in optical interconnect for AI scale-up connectivity, validated by a $3.25B strategic acquisition by Marvell
Geographic focus
Global, primarily US-based hyperscaler and semiconductor ecosystem
Patents and IP
Extensive patent portfolio in silicon photonics and optical interconnect chiplet design (details not itemized publicly)
About David (Dave) Lazovsky
Co-founder/CEO of Optimum Semiconductor Technologies; Venture Partner at Khosla Ventures; Ohio University degree. Post-acquisition: EVP & GM, Data Center Networking Business Group at Marvell.
Latest news about Celestial AI
Also named in
- Marvell acquires Celestial AI for $3.25B in cash and stock, gaining Photonic Fabric for optical interconnects in AI data centers. This solves bandwidth bottlenecks, enabling 100x faster chip-to-memory
- Marvell acquires Celestial AI for $3.25B upfront ($1B cash + 27.2M shares). Photonic Fabric integrates optical interconnects to fix AI memory bandwidth walls, enabling million-GPU clusters. Projects $
- Marvell acquired Celestial AI for $3.25B, integrating Photonic Fabric for optical interconnects in AI data centers. This tech cuts power use by 2x vs copper, slashing latency for rack-scale AI cluster
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Official website: https://www.celestial.ai/
