Investment led by Sutter Hill Ventures enables next-generation optical interconnects for AI Data Centers
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 14, 2026–(BUSINESS WIRE)–nEye.ai, a pioneer in integrated optical interconnects, today announced it has raised $80 million in Series C financing led by Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from existing investors including Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG; Microsoft’s Venture Fund, M12; and Socratic Partners, among others. This latest infusion of capital brings nEye’s total funding to $152 million.
The funding will accelerate the development and high-volume manufacturing of nEye’s proprietary Optical Circuit Switches (OCS). As AI gigawatt factories emerge as the standard for large-scale compute, the industry is shifting toward composable infrastructure. nEye’s technology introduces compact, fast-switching optical layers that allow for the flexible pooling of CPU, GPU, and memory resources, ensuring data center architectures can evolve alongside rapidly advancing AI models.
In conjunction with the financing, Stefan Dyckerhoff, Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures, will join the nEye Board of Directors.
“The market for Optical Circuit Switching is projected to surpass $3 billion within the next three years,” said Dyckerhoff. “By moving away from complex mechanical assemblies to a foundry-compatible wafer-scale process, nEye is positioned to deliver the most cost-effective, high-performance switching solution for scale-up, scale-out and scale-across applications.”
“Optical switching is now a requirement to unlock the true potential of AI training and inference at scale,” said James Luo, General Partner at CapitalG. “We are doubling down on nEye because their ‘OCS-on-a-chip’ approach offers a unique path to meeting the extreme density and power constraints of modern hyperscale data centers.”
nEye integrates Silicon Photonics, MEMS, and CMOS into a single chip, allowing for a significantly smaller footprint and lower power consumption compared to traditional switching solutions—critical requirements for the power-constrained environments of next-generation data centers.
“While this milestone validates our technology, our focus now shifts to scaling our foundry-based manufacturing and meeting the rigorous performance standards our customers demand,” said Ashish Vengsarkar, CEO of nEye.ai. “The addition of Stefan and the team at Sutter Hill Ventures to our existing slate of strategic partners strengthens our ability to address all hyperscaler use-cases.”
