Lightmatter launches a new photonics technology for AI circuits.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — Lightmatter, a $4.4 billion business, introduced two pieces of technology on Monday that attempt to accelerate connections between artificial intelligence processors.

Instead of sending electrical signals between computer processors, Lightmatter’s technology employs optical links and silicon photonics to transmit information via light.

Lightmatter, situated in Mountain View, California, has earned $850 million in venture capital to date, as such optical technologies have sparked a surge of investment in Silicon Valley as companies seek new methods to tie together chips to power chatbots, picture generators, and other AI applications.

Companies that make AI chips, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), have shown how to leverage optical technologies that are packed with their processors. Although its CEO stated that the technology is not yet developed enough to be used in all of its chips, Nvidia (NVDA.O) earlier this month included optical technology in a few of its networking processors.

On Monday, Lightmatter unveiled two new products that are intended to be used with AI processors. The first is an interposer, which is a layer of material on which the AI chip rests in order to link to nearby chips that are also resting on top of the interposer. The other is a “chiplet”—a tiny tile that may be positioned atop an AI chip.

According to Lightmatter, the chiplet and interposer will be available in 2026 and 2025, respectively. GlobalFoundries (GFS.O) is the manufacturer of the interposer.