iPronics Secures $125 Million for Optical Circuit Switch Technology
iPronics, a startup from Valencia, Spain, has secured $125 million in venture capital to develop and commercialize its optical circuit switch (OCS) technology. This innovation aims to improve data center networking by allowing for quick adjustments to new paths around computing chips that have burned out.
The OCS is inspired by Google's success with similar switches in its AI supercomputers. According to Daniel Pérez-López, founder and chief technical officer of iPronics, the failures of computing chips are now happening on a 'minute' time scale, making resilience and reliability crucial for data centers housing hundreds of thousands of chips.
iPronics has been shipping its switches for about a year and is working with large AI infrastructure providers. The company aims to shrink the size of the OCS equipment by 20-fold to fit more switches in a server rack.
The funding round was co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital, with participation from new and existing investors including Triatomic Capital, Bosch Ventures, Catalight Capital, and the European Innovation Council Fund. This brings iPronics' total fundraising to $177 million since its founding in 2019 as a spin-off from Technical University of Valencia.