Lightmatter, founded in 2017, has raised approximately half a billion dollars from investors and is close to being self-sustaining. The company is expected to be much larger than Mellanox Technologies, a computer networking company that Nvidia acquired in 2020 for about $7 billion. Lightmatter raised $155 million last year at a $1.2 billion valuation. The company believes that the use of artificial intelligence software is causing a significant change in the computing industry, necessitating greater efficiency due to the size of new processors needed to develop AI software and the amount of data and energy required.
Key takeaways:
- Nvidia Corp. Vice President Simona Jankowski is becoming chief financial officer at Lightmatter Inc., a chip startup focusing on artificial intelligence computing.
- Jankowski is taking the role after a nearly seven-year stint at Nvidia, where she oversaw investor relations and strategic finance.
- Lightmatter is attempting to revolutionize the computing world by allowing chips to communicate with light, potentially making them faster and more efficient.
- Lightmatter has raised roughly half a billion dollars from investors and its products will soon make an appearance in some of the world’s largest data centers.