Mesh closes $75M Series C at $1B valuation to accelerate universal Crypto Payments Network adoption
Unicorn status validates momentum as the only unified global payments network for today's borderless, tokenized economy
Mesh announced the successful close of their $75M Series C. The round brings our total funding to more than $200M and values the company at $1B.
As crypto moves from experimentation to real-world adoption, scalable infrastructure has become mission-critical. We built Mesh to address that challenge, centering our work around two core pillars:
- Solving fragmentation: We created a single “network of networks” uniting wallets, exchanges, and blockchains so payments and conversions can work across platforms by default.
- Unlocking “any-to-any payments”: We launched SmartFunding orchestration, allowing consumers to pay with the assets they already hold while merchants settle instantly in their preferred currency.
The leading crypto payments network MESH, announced it closed a $75 million Series C funding round, bringing its total amount raised to over $200 million and valuing the company at $1B. Dragonfly Capital led the round, with participation from Paradigm, Moderne Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, SBI Investment, and Liberty City Ventures.
Crypto is making the payment rails built for an analog world obsolete, and Mesh is leading this movement by connecting a fragmented global crypto market and bypassing the slow settlements and excessive fees long established by traditional finance. As the industry moves from experimentation to real-world adoption, capital is increasingly flowing toward infrastructure rather than speculation, with Mesh standing out as the only unified payment network for a borderless, tokenized economy.
The round also accelerates Mesh's expansion into regions like Latin America, Asia and Europe, fueling product development and strengthening a global network that already reaches more than 900 million users worldwide. Previously, the company announced its expansion into India, citing the country's young, tech-savvy population and $125B+ in annual remittances as reasons for the move. Mesh also previously announced support for Ripple USD and forged new partnerships with Paxos and Rain.
"Crypto is crowded by design, with new tokens and new protocols emerging every day," said Bam Azizi, Co-founder and CEO of Mesh. "That fragmentation creates real friction in the customer payment experience. We are focused on building the necessary infrastructure now to connect wallets, chains, and assets, allowing them to function as a unified network. This funding validates that the winners of the next decade won't be those who issue the most tokens, but those who build the network of networks that makes traditional card rails obsolete."
"Payments are entering a new era where value moves as software. Mesh is building the interoperability layer that makes crypto practical at scale: consumers can spend any asset, merchants can settle instantly in the stablecoin or fiat they want, and the complexity stays under the hood. That 'any-to-any' experience is exactly what mainstream adoption demands, and we're excited to lead this round as Mesh becomes the universal network for global, compliant crypto payments," said Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly.
Solving the "Stablecoin Paradox" Through Universal Interoperability
While the rapid growth of new stablecoins and blockchains signals a healthy industry, it's also reintroducing fragmentation that crypto was designed to solve. In 2025, stablecoins reached a historic $300B market cap and processed over $27T in annual transaction volume.
This rapid growth has created isolated pockets of liquidity, however, forcing users to navigate a maze of disparate platforms and complex network choices. Mesh serves as the neutral layer that unifies this fragmented landscape, ensuring the future of payments is built on infrastructure that makes all assets universally spendable.
As the only network that works with all crypto, Mesh remains asset-agnostic, providing the infrastructure that allows the entire industry to function as a single system. Through its proprietary SmartFunding technology, Mesh enables a true "any-to-any" advantage: consumers pay with any asset they hold – from Bitcoin to Solana – while merchants receive instant settlement in their preferred stablecoin (e.g., USDC or PYUSD) or local currency (e.g., dollars or euros).
A portion of Mesh's $75M Series C round was settled using stablecoins to demonstrate that this infrastructure is ready for high-stakes, real-world use. This milestone serves as definitive proof that global institutions are now comfortably relying on blockchain-native settlement when enterprise-grade execution, auditability, and controls are firmly in place.
For more information about Mesh, visit https://meshpay.com/.
About Mesh
Founded in 2020, Mesh is building the first global crypto payments network, connecting hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and financial services platforms to enable seamless digital asset payments and conversions. By unifying these platforms into a single network, Mesh is pioneering an open, connected, and secure ecosystem for digital finance. For more information, visit https://www.meshpay.com/.
Contact: mesh@missionnorth.com
About Dragonfly Capital
Dragonfly is a $4B crypto-focused global investment firm. Since 2017, Dragonfly has been at the forefront of blockchain and crypto innovation with a long-term oriented, technical, and research-driven approach, having been early backers of some of the most influential protocols and companies in the industry.
Contact: annica@dragonfly.xyz
TrueFoundry introduces TrueFailover, a mission critical platform ensuring business-critical AI workflows are uninterrupted
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TrueFoundry launches TrueFailover to automatically reroute enterprise AI traffic during model outages - VentureBeat
Introducing the mission-critical resilience layer for your AI applications. TrueFailover automatically routes around model outages, regional failures, and API degradations so AI systems stay online.
AI outages are happening more frequently, and they hit production systems hard. TrueFailover is our new resilience feature that automatically routes around model outages, regional failures, and API degradation so your AI applications stay online.
- Solution serves as a resilience engine for mission-critical workloads
- Helps enterprises architect for continuity, not just capability, ensuring business operations stay live even during major provider disruptions
TrueFoundry, an enterprise AI infrastructure platform, today announced TrueFailover, a new solution designed to keep AI-powered applications online even when major providers experience outages and degradation.
The announcement comes as more and more enterprises suffer major outages, leaving thousands of users unable to perform mission-critical tasks and scrambling for alternatives. These downtime instances often directly affect the business and its customers through lost revenue opportunities, stalled meetings, missed service-level agreements, and tickets piling up. This creates a ripple effect that can quickly have global implications.
“Most people experience these outages as an inconvenience, like not being able to scroll through their favorite social media app,” said Nikunj Bajaj, Co-Founder and CEO of TrueFoundry. “But for teams building AI systems, it’s a stark reminder that even the biggest, most reliable platforms fail, and that failure can have real business consequences if there is no backup plan. Resilience is not optional anymore — it’s architecture.”
AI now sits squarely in critical businesses:
- Pharmacies use GenAI to refill prescriptions to avoid delaying drug delivery.
- Sales teams rely on AI to generate proposals and outreach.
- Developers rely on AI coding assistants to ship faster.
- Customer support teams deploying new agents risk reputational damage if agents do not work the first time.
The catch: most AI applications rely on external models and APIs (LLMs, embedding services, vector databases, and voice and vision APIs) that can fail, rate-limit, or degrade in quality without warning. Recent incidents have shown partial LLM outages, embedding APIs slowing to a crawl, and latency spikes in voice-generation services.
“Too many teams have architected for capability, not continuity,” Bajaj added. “They picked the ‘best’ model, but never asked what happens when it’s unavailable at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday.”
Introducing TrueFailover: outage resilience for AI, by design
TrueFailover packages TrueFoundry’s multi-model and multi-region capabilities into a focused outage-resilience solution that sits on top of the company’s AI Gateway and globally distributed deployment layer.
When a primary model, region, or provider fails, TrueFailover ensures that AI workloads transition seamlessly to healthy alternatives — without requiring application teams to rewrite code or manually reroute traffic.
Key capabilities include:
- Multi-model failover
Define primary and fallback models across multiple providers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Groq, Mistral, or self-hosted) so that if one model is unavailable, rate-limited, or degraded, traffic transparently shifts to another. As a result, customer-facing and internal AI apps keep responding even when a primary model breaks. - Multi-region and multi-cloud resilience
Run AI endpoints across regions and clouds, with health-based routing that automatically diverts traffic away from unhealthy zones while maintaining low latency for global users. Regional outages become invisible to users, instead of global incidents. - Degradation-aware routing
Continuously monitor latency, error rates, and quality signals so that routing decisions respond not only to hard outages, but also to slowdowns and partial failures. Avoid “slow but technically up” failures that quietly destroy user experience and SLAs. - Health checks, monitoring, and tracing
Built-in health probes, observability, and request tracing provide a clear incident timeline: where failures originated, how traffic was rerouted, and which models carried the load. Now, Site Reliability Engineering and platform teams can diagnose issues in minutes, not hours, and prove how TrueFailover mitigated the impact. - Caching and rate protection
Strategic caching shields providers from sudden traffic spikes and protects customers from rate-limit cascades during high-traffic events or upstream instability. This allows systems to ride out demand spikes and provider limits without sudden brownouts or throttling surprises.
With TrueFailover, end-users and internal teams don’t see the outage — they see a system that continues to respond. The incident becomes a routing decision, not a business crisis.
From “Which model is best?” to “How do we ensure AI doesn’t break?”
Traditional AI conversations often focus on benchmark scores and model leaderboards. Forward-looking enterprises are starting with a different question: “How do we ensure AI doesn’t break?”
“TrueFoundry empowers us to deliver and scale AI capabilities seamlessly,” said Raghu Sethuraman, Vice President of Engineering at Automation Anywhere. “AI is now a fundamental requirement, and the control, availability, and resilience TrueFoundry provides enable us to confidently accelerate AI adoption and deployment across our organization.”
TrueFoundry brings hardened stability to the evolving AI stack by embedding TrueFailover at the AI Gateway Layer. This enables organizations to leverage health-based routing and graceful failover, ensuring AI applications remain as resilient as the world’s most robust distributed systems.
TrueFailover will be offered as an add-on resilience module on top of the TrueFoundry AI Gateway and platform. An early access program for design partners will open in the coming weeks, with broader availability to follow.
Enterprises interested in participating in the TrueFailover early access program can contact TrueFoundry via the company’s website.
About TrueFoundry
TrueFoundry is an Enterprise Platform as a Service that enables companies to build, observe, and govern Agentic AI applications securely, scalably, and with reliability through its AI Gateway and Agentic Deployment platform. Leading Fortune 1000 companies trust TrueFoundry to accelerate innovation and deliver AI at scale, with over 10 billion requests per month processed via the TrueFoundry AI Gateway and more than 1,000 clusters managed by its Agentic deployment platform. TrueFoundry’s vision is to become the central control plane for running Agentic AI at scale within enterprises, serving as the command center for enterprise AI. Headquartered in San Francisco, TrueFoundry operates across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, supporting enterprise AI deployments for some of the world’s most innovative organizations. To learn more about TrueFoundry, visit truefoundry.com.
Contacts
Media Contact
VSC for TrueFoundry
truefoundry@vsc.co
Lightmatter Introduces ground breaking Guide Light Engine for AI with integrated lasers to scale CPO for AI infrastructure
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A new class of integrated lasers to scale CPO for AI infrastructure
Lightmatter, the leader in photonic (super)computing, announced a foundational advancement in laser architecture: Very Large Scale Photonics (VLSP). Embodied in the Guide™ light engine, this breakthrough creates the industry’s most integrated laser platform supporting unprecedented bandwidths—moving laser manufacturing from manual assembly lines toward foundry production. VLSP technology leverages large-scale photonic integration to overcome power-scaling limitations, enabling the photonic interconnect roadmap for AI with an initial 8X increase in optical bandwidth density, unprecedented deployment scalability, and wavelength stability.
Just as Lightmatter’s Passage™ photonic interconnects have shattered shoreline bandwidth limitations with their unique 3D architecture, the company’s new Guide™ light engine represents a giant leap forward in laser technology. The largest AI clusters in hyperscale data centers now depend on connectivity that is fundamentally constrained by bandwidth density—limited not only by I/O at the chip edges but also by the fact that even the most advanced photonic interconnects are only as capable as the laser technology that powers them.
Overcoming The Power Wall
Current co-packaged optics (CPO) and near-package optics (NPO) solutions rely on discrete indium phosphide (InP) laser diodes integrated in External Laser Small Form Factor Pluggable (ELSFP) modules. These architectures face a power wall: connector end faces and epoxy-bonded assemblies are vulnerable to thermal damage, where contamination absorbs light and can cause fiber damage at power levels as low as hundreds of milliwatts. This limits the usefulness of scaling optical power in InP lasers—the traditional roadmap for laser technology. Doubling the bandwidth today requires doubling the number of ELSFPs, leading to corresponding increases in cost, power consumption, and front-panel space, ultimately decreasing system-level reliability. Further, discrete lasers struggle to achieve tight wavelength spacing and control in upcoming dense wavelength division multiplexing, where laser arrays must maintain precise wavelengths with minimal drift.
A New Scaling Paradigm
The Guide VLSP light engine establishes a new bandwidth-scaling paradigm by reducing the high component counts associated with discrete laser modules while delivering inherently superior yields and field reliability. By moving to an integrated architecture, Lightmatter has defined a laser roadmap that efficiently scales from 1 to 64 wavelengths and beyond while reducing assembly complexity. The result is a massive density improvement: the first generation Guide validation platform enables 100 Tbps of switch bandwidth in a compact 1RU chassis, a feat that would require about 18 conventional ELSFP modules, occupying 4RU of rack space.
“Our customers are building infrastructure for MoE and world models at scales that demand semiconductor-grade integration everywhere—including the light source,” said Nick Harris, co-founder and CEO of Lightmatter. “Scalable lasers unlock scalable CPO. Guide delivers massive bandwidth density through integration.”
"The transition toward co-packaged optics (CPO) is becoming a key enabler for the next generation of AI-scale networks, driven by the need for higher bandwidth density and lower power per bit as electrical I/O limits tighten at very high data center rates”, said Jean-Christophe Eloy, Founder and President of Yole Group. "Lightmatter’s VLSP innovation represents a fundamental shift in how we power optical interconnects. Its level of photonic integration provides a scalable light source that can enable hyperscale CPO deployments over the next decade, addressing a laser market opportunity that alone rivals the scale of the optical engine segment.”1
Lightmatter VLSP Technology Validation
The Guide light engine, powering Passage M-Series and L-Series (“Bobcat”) rack-scale validation platforms, showcases unprecedented laser performance:
- High Bandwidth Density: Up to 51.2 Tbps per laser module for NPO and CPO applications
- High Optical Output Power: Minimum of 100 mW per fiber
- Wavelengths: generates 16 wavelengths with multiplexing
- Closed-Loop Control: Enabling bidirectional photonic links, in which two 400 GHz-spaced wavelength grids interleave at precisely 200 GHz offset with +/- 20 GHz accuracy, while delivering optical power uniformity of up to 0.1 dB across the channels in fiber
Learn more: Lightmatter SC25 live demonstrations
Availability
The VLSP-based Guide validation platform is sampling now, powering the latest rack-scale Passage L-Series and M-Series test and validation platforms. The Guide laser module is designed to be interoperable with third-party NPO and CPO solutions. Evaluation Kits (EVKs) are available on a priority basis to select strategic partners.
About Lightmatter
Lightmatter is leading the revolution in AI data center infrastructure, enabling the next giant leaps in human progress. The company’s groundbreaking Passage™ platform—the world’s first 3D-stacked silicon photonics engine—and Guide®—the industry's first VLSP light engine—connect thousands to millions of XPUs. Designed to eliminate critical data bottlenecks, Lightmatter’s technology delivers unprecedented bandwidth density and energy efficiency for the most advanced AI and high-performance computing workloads, fundamentally redefining the architecture of next-generation AI infrastructure. Visit www.lightmatter.co to learn more.
Lightmatter, Passage, and Guide are trademarks of Lightmatter, Inc.
Any other trademarks or registered trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.
1 Source: Co-Packaged Optics for Data Centers 2025 report, Yole Group
Contacts
Media Contacts:
Lightmatter
John O’Brien
press@lightmatter.co
Enterprise AI leader TrueFoundry launched innovative AI Gateway unified control plane for agentic AI
TrueFoundry Enables Enterprises to Manage, Observe, and Govern Models, Model Context Protocol (MCP Servers), and Agents, Keeping Their Stack Cost-optimal and Future-ready
Govern, Deploy, Scale & Trace Agentic AI in One Unified Platform
TrueFoundry, an enterprise AI infrastructure platform, launched its AI Gateway on Product Hunt. The AI Gateway landed a spot in the top three and garnered more than 135 comments from the Product Hunt community, making it one of the most hunted products of the week. Already used in production for scaling thousands of agents across multiple Fortune 1000 companies, TrueFoundry’s AI Gateway provides a central hub where enterprises can manage, observe and govern agents.
Enterprises today are encountering significant roadblocks with AI evolving faster than their internal infrastructure can support. As workflows continue to shift toward agentic automation, there’s a real need for a centralized platform to manage models, prompts, guardrails, MCP servers and other agents. TrueFoundry is addressing this by providing a single control plane that connects various systems, keeping them organized, secure, and ready for the future.
TrueFoundry’s AI Gateway addresses the most complex enterprise challenges and serves as a centralized traffic controller for all agentic apps and corresponding components. It is specifically engineered to:
- Eliminate the "security blind spots" that arise when developers scatter API keys and credentials across disparate agent codebases.
- Provide a unified gateway architecture, governed registry of tools (via MCP), granular access controls, and production-ready observability.
- Empower teams to efficiently scale from prototype agents to enterprise automation.
“The response to our launch on Product Hunt proves there is clear demand for stronger agent-to-agent AI management tools, which we believe will become one of the most critical layers in the next generation of AI Production infrastructure,” said Anuraag Gutgutia, co-founder of TrueFoundry. “Our aim is to help teams transition from testing ideas to implementing them in real-life situations smoothly and efficiently, without wasting resources.”
To learn more about TrueFoundry, visit truefoundry.com.
About TrueFoundry
TrueFoundry is an Enterprise Platform as a Service that enables companies to build, observe, and govern Agentic AI applications securely, scalably, and with reliability through its AI Gateway and Agentic Deployment platform. Leading Fortune 1000 companies trust TrueFoundry to accelerate innovation and deliver AI at scale, with over 10 billion requests per month processed via the TrueFoundry AI Gateway and more than 1,000 clusters managed by its Agentic deployment platform. TrueFoundry’s vision is to become the central control plane for running Agentic AI at scale within enterprises, serving as the command center for enterprise AI. Headquartered in San Francisco, TrueFoundry operates across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, supporting enterprise AI deployments for some of the world’s most innovative organizations. To learn more about TrueFoundry, visit truefoundry.com.
Contacts
Media Contact
Michelle Mead
VSC for TrueFoundry
truefoundry@vsc.co
Octane expands into the automotive market with Captive-as-a-Service or dealership groups
Octane announced a major expansion into the automotive industry with their turnkey Captive-as-a-Service solution that helps dealerships maximize their return on each sale and deliver a superior customer experience.
A Smart move by the Octane® team stepping into auto financing with a wholesale approach to dealer captives. When the capital stack, underwriting and servicing engines are built with compliance and performance in mind from day one, lenders and partners see stronger recoveries and fewer surprises down the road. If anyone in the ecosystem is thinking about how to operationalize that balance between asset performance and regulatory discipline.
- Octane’s Captive-as-a-Service is a turnkey solution that offers automotive dealer groups the benefits of owning their own captive without the time and expense of building one from scratch
- Brings together technology, underwriting, loan processing and servicing, compliance, and capital markets execution in a single platform under the dealer’s chosen brand
- Enables dealer groups to participate in loan originations facilitated through their captive brand, diversifying their revenue streams and building long-term enterprise value
- Strengthens customer retention by delivering a fully-branded end-to-end experience and creating new opportunities to engage with customers
- Leverages Octane’s successful track record: more than $7 billion in originations, more than $4.7 billion of asset-backed securities (ABS) issued, and AAA-ratings*
Octane® (Octane Lending, Inc.), the fintech company unlocking the power of financial products for retailers and consumers, announced today that it has entered the auto market to help dealerships maximize their return on each car sale while delivering a superior customer experience.
Octane’s Captive-as-a-Service offering enables auto dealerships to enjoy the benefits of owning a captive finance company without the significant up-front costs, time, effort, and investment required to establish such a business. Octane’s turnkey solution brings together core captive business elements, including credit underwriting, loan processing, loan servicing, funding and capital markets execution, under a brand name of the partner’s choice. Dealer partners and their customers benefit from a seamless technology-forward experience.
Additionally, tailored programs can include access to digital soft-pull tools, Octane Prequal, and Prequal Flex®, to drive qualified leads; a customized lending platform to support dealership-level promotions; and monthly customer touchpoints enabling dealer marketing for the duration of a consumer’s loan. As a result, Octane’s Captive-as-a-Service solution allows dealers to earn more money on each sale, grow and diversify their earning streams, strengthen customer loyalty, and build long-term enterprise value.
“At Octane, we are constantly looking for ways to help our partners grow their businesses. With Captive-as-a-Service, we give dealer groups the flexibility to create a program to meet their specific needs, like supplementing their existing lender mix, connecting their in-store and digital strategy, or turning their loan portfolio into a profit center,” said Jason Guss, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Octane. “After seeing success with captive and private label partnerships in the powersports and RV markets, we are excited to bring our Captive-as-a-Service solution to the auto market.”
“We’re extremely impressed with Octane’s efficient and seamless process, providing an integrated financing experience that directly benefits our customers,” said Roger W. Holler III, President & CEO at Holler-Classic Family of Dealerships. “Our buyers across the credit spectrum can move confidently through the loan process, while giving us more control as we continue to scale our business. Partnering with Octane’s team has been fantastic; a smart business move for the Holler-Classic Family of Dealerships.”
Through its in-house lender, Roadrunner Financial®, Inc., Octane has surpassed $7 billion in aggregate originations since its founding in 2014. The company has considerable underwriting expertise and consistent credit performance, as evidenced by its AAA ratings*. Dealers can benefit from Octane’s in-house loan processing team, which offers support seven days a week, and its award-winning loan servicing team, which handles in-house payments, collections, and recovery. Dealers can also leverage Octane’s significant capital markets experience; the company has issued more than $4.7 billion of asset-backed securities (ABS) since establishing its ABS program in December 2019, has cumulatively sold or secured commitments to sell $3.3 billion in loans through whole loan sale and forward flow transactions, and maintains strong relationships with institutional investors, banks, rating agencies, and warehouse capital providers. Octane’s leadership team, which includes Steven Fernald, President and CFO, Mark Molnar, Chief Risk Officer, and David Bertoncini, SVP of Credit Strategy, Auto, has more than 50 years of combined experience in capital markets, financial services, compliance, and credit risk, and over 25 years of combined experience in auto lending.
“The Octane Captive program makes an incredibly powerful tool — captive financing — approachable and deployable for us as a dealer group,” said Matt Greenblatt, Owner/Dealer Principal at Matt Blatt Dealerships. “We are able to serve our customers better, see a fantastic return on our portfolio, and leverage the Octane team to implement solutions that save us money and bring in new customers. This is a new area of growth and profit for us and we are excited to be leading the industry and embracing it.”
“Our Captive-as-a-Service solution also unlocks countless marketing opportunities to drive value across the dealership, like coupons for servicing and maintenance or remarketing messages to drive the next sale,” said Mark Davidson, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Octane. “At the same time, we help dealers deliver a fast, seamless financing experience to their customers through our digital tools and instant credit decisioning, and responsibly extend credit to a wide range of customers through our proprietary underwriting model.”
Learn more at octane.co/o/captive-lending.
*On the senior class of notes of the company’s asset-backed securitizations. The full analysis for S&P’s ratings, including any updates, which you should review and understand, is available on spglobal.com and can be accessed here. KBRA’s ratings are subject to all of the terms and conditions set forth in the related report and KBRA’s website, which you should review and understand, and can be accessed here.
Media Relations: Shannon O'Hara
Senior Vice President, Communications and People at Octane
Press@octane.co
Investor Relations:
IR@octane.co
AI infrastructure innovator Neurophos closes $110 million Series A to Launch Exaflop-Scale photonic AI chips
The era of the "Optical Processing Unit" (OPU) powering the next generation of AI infrastructure has arrived.
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From invisibility cloaks to AI chips: Neurophos raises $110M to build tiny optical processors for inferencing - Techcrunch
For years, we’ve known that AI is evolving faster than the hardware that supports it. Traditional silicon GPUs are hitting a wall, and consuming massive amounts of energy and generating heat that data centers can no longer manage.
2026 is the demarcation line where AI infrastructure technology changes to photonics. It's imperative in order to unlock the true value and global scale of artificial intelligence, and it's going to be powered by light.
We're thrilled to share that Neurophos has closed its Series A funding round, and our follow-on participation from our Series Seed investment. The Series A round led by Gates Frontier and Microsoft’s M12 is to scale what might be the most significant "physics-level" breakthrough in a decade: The OPU Photonic AI Chip.
Here is why the industry is buzzing about Neurophos:
100x More Efficient: By using light (photons) instead of electricity to perform calculations, these chips deliver up to 100x the performance and energy efficiency of traditional silicon.
The 10,000x Shrink: Their team has achieved the "impossible"—shrinking optical components by 10,000x to pack over 1 million processing elements on a single chip.
Sustainable Scaling: This isn't just about speed; it's about the planet. This technology slashes the carbon footprint of AI, allowing us to scale intelligence without crashing the power grid.
"Drop-in" Ready: No need to rebuild the rack. OPUs are designed to seamlessly replace existing GPUs.
With a powerhouse team featuring veterans from NVIDIA, Apple, Meta, and Intel, Neurophos isn't just predicting the future of compute—they’re building it.
Neurophos, a leader in photonic AI chip technology, has raised $110 million in an oversubscribed Series A round, bringing total funding to $118 million. The round was led by Gates Frontier, with participation from M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Carbon Direct Capital, Aramco Ventures, Bosch Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, Space Capital, and others.
"Modern AI inference demands monumental amounts of power and compute," said Dr. Marc Tremblay, Corporate Vice President and Technical Fellow of Core AI Infrastructure at Microsoft. "We need a breakthrough in compute on par with the leaps we've seen in AI models themselves, which is what Neurophos' technology and high-talent density team is developing."
As AI adoption accelerates, data centers face critical limitations in power and scalability. Traditional silicon-based GPUs cannot meet growing computational demands, resulting in increased costs and energy consumption. Neurophos addresses these challenges with a proprietary optical processing unit (OPU) that integrates over one million micron-scale optical processing elements on a single chip. This innovation delivers up to 100x the performance and energy efficiency of current leading chips, offering a practical, drop-in replacement for GPUs in data centers.
"Moore's Law is slowing, but AI can't afford to wait. Our breakthrough in photonics unlocks an entirely new dimension of scaling, by packing massive optical parallelism on a single chip," says Dr. Patrick Bowen, CEO and Co-Founder of Neurophos. "This physics-level shift means both efficiency and raw speed improve as we scale up, breaking free from the power walls that constrain traditional GPUs."
Neurophos' breakthrough lies in the development of micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators—a 10,000x miniaturization over previous photonic elements—making large-scale, manufacturable photonic computing possible for the first time. The result is a new class of AI accelerator: ultra-fast, energy-efficient, and adaptable to future AI workloads.
"As the AI industry grapples with a surge in demand that tests our ability to satisfy with compute and power, disruptive approaches to compute may open routes to sustained or accelerated systems scaling that will be needed before the end of the decade. With their approach to hyper-efficient optical computation, the Neurophos team have advanced swiftly from a working proof of concept towards a realistic plan to deliver products on a timeline we can underwrite and believe in," said Michael Stewart, Managing Partner at M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund.
"From the start, we backed Neurophos because we believed the future of AI was bound by physics, not by algorithms," said Chris Alliegro, Managing Partner at MetaVC Partners. "Neurophos is addressing the only problem that really matters for the future of AI: the limits imposed by silicon. Their optical architecture provides the foundation for the next generation of machine intelligence."
Neurophos' technology enables significant reductions in power consumption, supporting the next generation of AI infrastructure without the need for exponential increases in energy or physical resources. The company's advancements promise to make AI more accessible and cost-effective across industries.
"Reducing chip-related emissions is now as essential as delivering compute," said Jonathan Goldberg, CEO of Carbon Direct Capital. "Neurophos offers step-function gains in both. This is the kind of next-generation AI infrastructure companies urgently need as their compute demands skyrocket."
The new funding will accelerate delivery of Neurophos' first integrated photonic compute system, including datacenter-ready OPU modules, a full software stack, and early-access developer hardware. The company is expanding its Austin headquarters and opening a San Francisco engineering site to meet early customer demand.
Additional investors include DNX Ventures, Geometry, Alumni Ventures, Wonderstone Ventures, MetaVC Partners, Morgan Creek Capital, Silicon Catalyst Ventures, Mana Ventures, Gaingels, and others. Cooley LLP serves as legal counsel.
About Neurophos
Neurophos Inc. is an Austin-based semiconductor company developing high-performance, energy-efficient photonic AI inference chips. Founded by Dr. Patrick Bowen and Dr. Andrew Traverso, the team includes industry veterans from NVIDIA, Apple, Samsung, Intel, AMD, Meta, ARM, Micron, Mellanox, Lightmatter, and more. For details, visit www.neurophos.com.
Signals intelligence data and analytics leader HawkEye 360 launched satellite cluster 13
HawkEye 360 successfully launched Cluster 13 on Sunday morning and has confirmed initial communications with the satellites.
This deployment advances their ability to support U.S. Government and international partners with consistent, high-quality RF data across multi-domain mission environments. Alongside recent strategic investments, Cluster 13 reflects a continued focus on strengthening the technology and capabilities their customers rely on.
The global leader in signals intelligence data and analytics, HawkEye 360, successfully launched its latest satellite trio, Cluster 13, and confirmed initial communications with the satellites. Cluster 13, integrated via Exolaunch, launched into a sun-synchronous orbit as part of the Twilight rideshare mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
This successful deployment and initial contact advance HawkEye 360's ability to support U.S. Government and international partners with consistent, high-quality radio-frequency insights across multi-domain mission environments. Operating in a sun-synchronous orbit, the satellites provide consistent opportunities to collect RF data over key regions, strengthening the delivery of RF insights worldwide.
"Cluster 13 strengthens our ability to provide the critical RF insights our partners need to navigate today's complex mission landscape," said John Serafini, CEO of HawkEye 360. "Alongside our recent acquisition and funding milestone, this launch reflects a continued investment in the technology, people, and capabilities our customers rely on, reinforcing HawkEye 360's role as a leader in signals intelligence."
The payload leverages advanced RF detection, enhanced onboard processing, and upgraded waveform-collection capabilities first introduced across recent launches. Together, these technologies capture a broader range of signals with greater clarity, improve geolocation performance, enhance onboard processing, and increase overall collection capacity. As a result, HawkEye 360 strengthens multi-domain mission support and enables customers to access RF insights more efficiently.
Following commissioning and on-orbit checkout, the satellites will integrate into HawkEye 360's space-derived signals intelligence architecture. This integration advances the company's use of scalable signal processing and AI-enabled analytics to detect, characterize, and geolocate radio-frequency activity worldwide, reinforcing HawkEye 360's defense-tech mission to deliver trusted domain awareness and support critical operations for defense and government partners.
About HawkEye 360
HawkEye 360 is equipping defense, intelligence, and national security leaders with mission-critical signals intelligence to enable faster, better decision-making. By detecting, geolocating, and characterizing radio-frequency emissions worldwide, HawkEye 360 delivers trusted domain awareness and early-warning indicators to the US Government and allied partners. Our space-based collection, proprietary signal processing, and AI-powered analytics transform knowledge of RF spectrum into a strategic advantage. Proven by operational mission success, HawkEye 360 is redefining how signals intelligence strengthens national and global security.
Nvidia's $20 Billion Groq Deal Reshapes AI Infrastructure for the age of inference
A record-breaking licensing transaction signals the dawn of the inference era and validates Groq's meteoric rise
Nvidia's $20 Billion Groq Deal: A Strategic Masterstroke in the Inference Era
As inference emerges as the defining battleground in AI's global expansion, Nvidia has made a decisive move—acquiring a $20 billion licensing agreement with Groq, one of the fastest-growing and best-executing companies in our portfolio.
The numbers speak for themselves. Since launch, CEO Jonathan Ross and his team have been on a remarkable trajectory: over 2.5 million developers onboarded to their cloud, major global partnerships secured, and data centers deployed at a pace unmatched by any modern AI infrastructure company. For context, OpenAI took years to reach 4 million developers—Groq accomplished a comparable feat in months.
While we're thrilled to witness this record-setting outcome for the AI industry, we'll admit to some surprise. Based on Groq's momentum, we had been anticipating an IPO path with a potential $100 billion valuation within the next 24 months.
The Deal Structure
Understanding the mechanics of a $20B licensing transaction
Nvidia's $20 billion licensing transaction with Groq represents a strategic pivot in how the AI giant approaches the rapidly evolving inference market. Rather than a traditional acquisition, this licensing structure allows Nvidia to integrate Groq's revolutionary LPU (Language Processing Unit) technology into its ecosystem while enabling Groq to maintain operational independence.
The deal structure is particularly notable for its focus on intellectual property licensing rather than equity acquisition. This approach provides Nvidia with immediate access to Groq's inference acceleration technology—critical as AI deployment shifts from training-heavy workloads to inference-dominated production environments.
"As inference becomes the next biggest phase in global AI scale and adoption, Groq became a must-have to add an inference layer to the Nvidia ecosystem."
Company & Employee Impact
What this means for Groq's trajectory and team
CEO and founder Jonathan Ross has led Groq on what can only be described as an epic trajectory. The company's execution has been remarkable: acquiring over 2.5 million developers on their cloud platform, closing major global partnerships, and building data centers at a pace that outstrips any modern AI infrastructure company.
For context, OpenAI accumulated 4 million developers over several years—Groq achieved more than half that figure in mere months. This velocity of adoption speaks to both the performance advantages of Groq's LPU architecture and the team's exceptional go-to-market execution.
Team Continuity
The licensing structure allows Groq's team to continue operating independently, preserving the culture and velocity that made them attractive to Nvidia in the first place.
Operational Scale
With $20B in licensing capital, Groq can accelerate data center buildout and talent acquisition without the constraints of traditional venture funding cycles.
Developer Adoption: Groq vs OpenAI
The Investor Perspective
A record outcome with an unexpected path
Many believed Groq was on a clear path to IPO, with projections suggesting a potential $100 billion valuation within 24 months post-listing. The decision to pursue a licensing arrangement with Nvidia rather than the public markets signals either an extraordinarily compelling offer or a strategic calculation about market timing and partnership value.
"We were thrilled to see this record AI industry outcome, but also surprised based on our belief that Groq was heading to IPO and a potential $100 billion valuation in the next 24 months."
Investment Thesis Validated
Groq has been described as "one of the fastest growing, best executing companies" in the AI infrastructure space. This deal validates the thesis that purpose-built inference hardware would become critical infrastructure as AI moves from research labs to production deployment at scale.
Technology & Industry Implications
Reshaping the AI infrastructure landscape
The strategic rationale for Nvidia is clear: as AI workloads shift from training to inference, the company needs to maintain its dominant position across the entire AI compute spectrum. Groq's LPU architecture offers deterministic latency and exceptional throughput for inference workloads—capabilities that complement Nvidia's GPU-centric approach.
LPU vs GPU: Performance Comparison
For Nvidia
Adds a critical inference layer to the ecosystem, positioning Nvidia to capture value across both training and production AI workloads without cannibalizing GPU sales.
For Groq
Gains access to Nvidia's enterprise relationships and global distribution, accelerating LPU adoption while maintaining technological independence.
For the Industry
Signals that inference optimization is now a first-class concern, validating investments in purpose-built inference infrastructure by other startups.
For Developers
The 2.5M+ developers on Groq's platform now have a pathway to deeper Nvidia integration, potentially simplifying hybrid training-inference deployments.
The Groq Journey From Google TPU spinout to record-breaking $20B deal
Looking Ahead
The inference era begins
Nvidia's willingness to pay $20 billion for licensing rights to inference technology validates what many in the industry have long believed: the real value in AI isn't in training models, but in deploying them at scale. Groq's LPU architecture, with its deterministic performance and exceptional throughput, is now positioned to be the inference backbone of the world's most valuable technology company's AI ecosystem.
For Groq, its team, and its investors, this is more than a transaction—it's validation of a vision that bet big on inference when the world was still focused on training.
Aerospace innovator Natilus expands globally into the fastest-growing aviation markets with SpiceJet India
Natilus and Spicejet have partnered with SpiceJet buying 100 of Natilu's innovative blended-wing aircraft, aiming for greater fuel efficiency, lower costs, and reduced emissions in India's growing market. Natilus established an Indian subsidiary (Natilus India) in Mumbai to support operations, as SpiceJet helps with local certification for these futuristic, sustainable planes, potentially transforming domestic air travel.
- The company's new subsidiary in Mumbai - Natilus India - will serve Indian airlines' need for new planes amid country's rapid economic growth
- SpiceJet places purchase order for 100 of Natilus's HORIZON passenger aircraft to reduce airline's emissions and operational costs
- The move reflects India's appetite for new aircraft that supplement commercial fleets and open the door to new domestic and international routes
Natilus, a U.S. aerospace manufacturer of blended-wing body aircraft, today debuted Natilus India, a subsidiary headquartered in Mumbai and led by Ravi Bhatia, Regional Director, to support in-country operations. Simultaneously, Natilus announced its first commercial partnership with one of India's largest passenger airlines, SpiceJet Ltd., which plans to purchase 100 of Natilus's flagship passenger plane, HORIZON, once the plane is certified in India. SpiceJet sees HORIZON as an opportunity to advance its sustainability efforts and drive forward aviation innovation in India and will be the first airline in India to add HORIZON to its fleets.
Natilus India will prioritize the expansion of Natilus's family of BWB aircraft into Indian markets and will coordinate closely with SpiceJet. This development also positions Natilus to begin exploratory sourcing of Indian-made manufactured components.
"We see immense opportunity to deliver a superior and more-efficient airplane for Indian airlines, such as SpiceJet," said Ravi Bhatia, Regional Director of Natilus India. "The establishment of the subsidiary in India is the first step in Natilus establishing roots in India and ultimately securing more commercial airlines customers who want to better serve the needs of their passengers."
Natilus is developing a family of blended-wing aircraft including its flagship passenger plane HORIZON and cargo plane KONA. Through improvements in aerodynamics, Natilus's blended-wing aircraft offer 40% greater capacity, 50% lower operating costs and 30% less fuel. Natilus's HORIZON, which can transport up to 240 passengers in its high-capacity configuration, is a prime solution for Indian commercial airlines looking to grow their fleets and keep flights affordable. Deliveries of the HORIZON will begin in the 2030s, at which point the HORIZON is poised to become the most cost- and fuel-efficient aircraft in existing commercial and cargo fleets.
"Today, India has one of the fastest growing markets in the world and it has an appetite for new aircraft that can both supplement its commercial carrier fleets, while opening the door to new domestic and international routes," said Aleksey Matyushev, CEO and Co-Founder of Natilus. "Our HORIZON serves an ideal solution and represents an innovative path forward for the industry, for India and for the world."
HawkEye 360 closes $150 millions Series E and strategic acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis ISA
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HawkEye 360 Acquires ISA, Expanding One of the Industry's Most Advanced Signal-Processing Platforms
HawkEye 360, the global leader in signals intelligence data and analytics, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Innovative Signal Analysis (ISA), supported by equity and debt financings totaling $150 million.
The acquisition of ISA significantly expands HawkEye 360's signal-processing capabilities, bringing advanced algorithms, mission-ready systems, and deep engineering expertise that enhance the company's ability to detect, characterize, and analyze complex RF activity. ISA's technology and team strengthen HawkEye 360's end-to-end platform by accelerating data processing, improving performance in challenging RF environments, and supporting more scalable delivery of insights to customers.
This Series E preferred equity financing round was co-led by existing investor NightDragon and Center15 Capital, with additional secured and mezzanine debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank, Pinegrove Venture Partners, and Hercules Capital, Inc. The funding supports HawkEye 360's acquisition of ISA and strengthens the company's financial position, reinforcing the company's disciplined approach to growth and long-term financial management.
"This transaction marks an important step forward for HawkEye 360 as we continue to scale our platform and integrate highly complementary technical capabilities," said John Serafini, CEO of HawkEye 360. "The acquisition of ISA cements our position as the leading provider of RF data, signal processing, and analysis. The leadership of NightDragon and Center15 in this Series E round, alongside our lending partners, reflects confidence in our strategy and the value our capabilities bring to customers and partners worldwide."
"NightDragon is proud to continue our support of HawkEye 360's mission and growth strategy by leading this Series E round," said Dave DeWalt, Founder and CEO, NightDragon. "Since our initial investment, the company has made exceptional progress, and this funding and acquisition represent an important step in accelerating growth and advancing a platform we believe is essential to the market and to enduring national and global security." NightDragon has been an investor in HawkEye 360 since 2021.
"This financing supports the integration of ISA while maintaining a balanced and deliberate approach to scaling the business," said Craig Searle, CFO of HawkEye 360. "It strengthens our balance sheet and positions the company to execute on our operational priorities."
"Hawkeye360 is delivering mission-critical signals intelligence for the United States and its allies. We are proud to support Hawkeye 360's next phase of growth," said Ian Winer, Founder & CEO at Center15 Capital.
With the integration of ISA underway, HawkEye 360 continues to advance its platform and deliver signals intelligence capabilities that defense, government, and international partners rely on to support critical missions.
Cooley LLP represented HawkEye 360 in this transaction.
About HawkEye 360
HawkEye 360 is equipping defense, intelligence, and national security leaders with mission-critical signals intelligence to enable faster, better decision-making. By detecting, geolocating, and characterizing radio-frequency emissions worldwide, HawkEye 360 delivers trusted domain awareness and early-warning indicators to the US Government and allied partners. Our space-based collection, proprietary signal processing, and AI-powered analytics transform knowledge of RF spectrum into a strategic advantage. Proven by operational mission success, HawkEye 360 is redefining how signals intelligence strengthens national and global security.