Photonics — a field that underpins light-based systems for manipulating data — has a bright future, as the rise of AI demands better computing performance, but it has yet to be fully applied to a new generation of chips. German startup Akhetonics hopes to change that. It’s raised a €6 million seed funding round (approximately $6.33 million) to deliver on this promise, TechCrunch can exclusively reveal.

While several companies are working with photons on tangential issues or point solutions that mix electronics and photonics, Akhetonics — whose name is a portmanteau of Akhet, an Egyptian hieroglyph for “horizon”, and photonics — is outright aiming to build a general-purpose chip.

“General purpose” in this context means chips that it could be used for all sorts of tasks and software applications. And since Akhetonics is taking an all-optical approach that will also be digital and compatible with existing workloads, unlike analog approaches, it could be particularly useful in environments that require high-performance in real time, such as networking, avionics, and space.

Speed aside, energy efficiency is another aspect where photonics can help — and one that is increasingly tied to geopolitics, as is chip sovereignty. “For us, the most interesting part is that we have a supply chain that is very diverse,” co-founder and CEO Michael Kissner told TechCrunch.

Potentially, Akhetonics could make its general-purpose chip anywhere, making it possible for companies to access locally sourced high-performance compute — if it works. That’s a big “if”; or more precisely, “when.” 

Most observers agree that photonics will make its way to chips — but French VC firm Daphni, for instance, recently said it won’t invest in general-purpose chips at the moment.

While Lightmatter, a photonics company that initially focused on chips, pivoted to interconnects to great success, bringing faster data transfer between CPUs and GPUs within data centers. 

While it still seems far-fetched to some, Matterwave Ventures, the VC firm that led Akhetonics’ new round, believes that the time is right for fully optical technology to be applied to general-purpose computation. “For us, it felt like there are sufficient things that are coming together to make this a reality,” principal Silviu Apostu told TechCrunch. 

This will still take time, but maybe not as much as some may think; Akhetonics plans to deliver its first commercial product to customers mid-next year. Kissner is confident that it’s already confirmed feasibility thanks to its previous funding round by deep tech VC firm Runa Capital in 2023. “Our big goal was to show that you can do general purpose computing using only optics, and that is something that we have now shown,” he said.

The key to Akhetonics’ approach — and what makes this feasible, according to Apostu — is to rethink the architecture from first principles.

“People think you need billions of [optical transistors],” Kissner added. “But with the right architecture, you don’t.” For instance, the company explained in a recent paper how it can do without the usual optimization that the likes of AMD, Intel and Nvidia have applied to current-gen chips.

This also makes the development process cheaper than for regular chips — hence the relatively small round size for a chipmaking business. Akhetonics said most of the seed funding will go into growing headcount to 30 people as the team works towards delivering prototypes to customers. “For us, it’s actually a lot of money,” Kissner suggested. “In our world, you can design a chip for €50,000.” 

Cheaper costs and a local supply chain are two big differences compared to existing AI semiconductors; Kissner seems genuinely baffled that the “trillion dollar Al industry” relies on chips made in geopolitically troublesome areas. And Akhetonics’ alternative positioning has evidently resonated with investors. “They really support our mission to create this European, almost democratized version of high-performance computing,” he said. 

With all that said, there are still questions over commercial demand for high-performance computing, and whether it might be better served by integrated photonics for specific use cases. But for Akhetonics, and competitors like LightSolver, all-optical chips are the best answer.