22OCT

Salience Labs adds AMD and Intel in $125m round

2 min read

16:30UTC

The Oxford optical-switch maker's Series B, led by Bullhound Capital, put two rival American chipmakers and a £10m British Business Bank stake on its register.

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Key takeaway

Salience Labs now counts AMD, Intel and the British state among its shareholders.

Salience Labs announced a $125m (about £94m) Series B on 14 October led by Bullhound Capital⁠¹. The company makes all-optical circuit switches, which route data between processors as light without converting it to electrical signals, and was spun out of Oxford and the University of Münster in 2021.

New investors include AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, the Japanese financial group SBI, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank, whose £10m is a direct stake in the company. Two competing American chipmakers now hold its shares.

The round followed a live demonstration of a 64-port switch at ECOC 2026 (the European Conference on Optical Communication); the money goes on volume manufacturing and a Silicon Valley office. Hudson River Trading also backed Olix, the London inference-chip company, when it raised its Series B in August.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Salience Labs is a young company that grew out of the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in Germany. It makes switches that steer data between computer chips using light instead of electricity. The big AI data centres that train chatbots and similar systems move vast amounts of data between thousands of chips. Switching it as light can save energy. The company has raised $125m, about £94m. Investors include the chipmakers AMD and Intel and the British Business Bank, the government-owned investor.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
A live 64-port demonstration at ECOC 2026 lets Salience Labs pitch hyperscale buyers with working hardware rather than prototypes.
Risk
Volume manufacturing may be placed with foreign photonics foundries, leaving the British Business Bank exposed to a company whose output is made abroad.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Arm began in 1990 as a joint venture of Acorn Computers, Apple and VLSI Technology. Competing customers holding shares kept it neutral, and that neutrality became its business model.

Counter-parallel: Inmos, the Bristol chip company the National Enterprise Board founded with state money in 1978, was sold to Thorn EMI in 1984 and later passed to SGS-Thomson. State equity in a British chipmaker did not keep it independent.

Bullhound Capital's lead and the strategic money from AMD Ventures and Intel Capital value the company on a data-centre market, not a telecoms one. The use of funds, volume manufacturing and a Silicon Valley office, points to American hyperscale customers as the first buyers.

Salience Labs has not named the site for volume manufacturing. Photonic chips are made in a small number of foundries, and none of the round's named uses commits production to Britain.

Consensus view: Optics.org and DataCenterDynamics place Salience Labs in the race to replace electrical packet switches inside AI data centres with optical circuit switches, which cut power by keeping data as light. Google has run its own optical circuit switches in its data centres for years, which shows hyperscale buyers will adopt the technology once it reaches volume.

Counter-view: With AMD Ventures and Intel Capital both on the share register, two rival chipmakers gain an early view of a supplier that could sit between their processors. The British Business Bank's direct stake gives the state a seat at the same table, but as a minority holder it cannot steer who Salience Labs sells to.

Key tension: Whether Salience Labs stays a neutral supplier to every chipmaker, or its strategic investors pull it towards one camp before a buyer appears.

First Reported In

Update #16 · Stryker agrees option to buy CMR Surgical

Optics.org· 22 Oct 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

British Business Bank writes £180m into six AI funds

The British Business Bank's £10m direct stake formed part of Salience Labs' Series B.

Occurred 15 Oct 2026

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This Event

Salience Labs adds AMD and Intel in $125m round

Two competing American chipmakers and the British state now hold equity in the same photonics spinout.

Different Perspectives

Abu Dhabi Investment Council

The Abu Dhabi Investment Council holds notes in Nscale's $3.36bn pre-IPO raise, beside Third Point, Apollo, Citadel and Nvidia. No British institution appears among the named holders of notes that convert into shares at Nscale's New York listing.

CDP Venture Capital

CDP Venture Capital, the venture arm of Italy's state lender, led TrueLayer's £20.4m round to expand Pay by Bank across Europe. A foreign state investor set the terms on a London fintech round in the same month the British Business Bank mostly followed.

EDBI

Singapore's state investor EDBI joined Universal Quantum's Series A of more than $100m, and the Sussex company is opening its first research centre outside Europe in Singapore. British state money is absent from the largest Series A by a UK quantum company.

Forbion

Forbion co-led OMass Therapeutics' $310m Series C with Bain Capital Life Sciences and Novo Holdings, while the British Business Bank and Syncona followed. The terms of the Oxford spinout's round were set by investors from three countries, none of them Britain.

British Business Bank

The Bank committed £180m to six AI funds on 15 October with no UK-deployment condition, yet led the first close of Microbiotica's £36m Series C. That lead, with Airtel Money choosing London for its £5.3bn debut, is the evidence that British money and markets still set some terms.

Stryker Corporation

Stryker called its roughly $400m CMR Surgical deal its entry into soft-tissue robotics, taking US sales rights for Versius, a board seat and an exclusive option over 100% of the company. The option lets Stryker choose whether and when a Cambridge robot maker becomes part of an American group.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.