Singapore’s Staera Semiconductor raised $4.6 M to integrate optical connectivity into AI devices

Singapore-based Staera Semiconductor, formerly known as New Silicon Corporation, has secured US$4.6 million in pre-seed funding to develop optical data links integrated directly into silicon chips.

The funding round was led by Openspace Capital, with participation from SGInnovate, Black Kite Capital, 28 Holdings, In Group and Decimus Technologies, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

Staera said its technology aims to address a key bottleneck restricting the expansion of AI systems: data transfer between chips. Copper wiring can experience significant declines in electrical performance over the millimeter-to-meter distances connecting chips, boards and racks. The company’s first product, Lightwire, replaces these copper connections with light generated within the chip, using the same manufacturing process and wafer as the chip’s circuits.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), electricity consumption by data centres could increase from approximately 415 TWh in 2024 to around 945 TWh by 2030. Staera argues that copper-based connections cannot support higher data transmission over longer distances without consuming additional power, a challenge its Lightwire technology is designed to address.

Lightwire is integrated into the bridge or interposer chip that already connects processors and memory in AI hardware, allowing it to work with existing packaging systems. The company’s design targets include transferring data with less than one-tenth of the energy consumed by today’s leading optical links. It also aims to deliver data transfer speeds of 24 TB per second while using less than 50 W of power, compared with nearly 1 kW for co-packaged optics.

The latest funding will support the transition from research to commercial product development. Staera plans to expand its team into the United States and collaborate with customers and supply-chain partners. It is targeting a commercial launch in 2030.

Staera originated as a spin-off from the Low Energy Electronic Systems research group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.