The latest round, which brings its total funding to $870 million, was led by investment firm Neuberger Berman and involved new investors including ARK Invest, Qatar Investment Authority and 1789 Capital.
Investor appetite in the AI ecosystem has remained strong as venture and private-equity firms bet on the technology to upend traditional workflows, driving steady funding into companies building the infrastructure.
Ayar’s technology uses light instead of the traditionally used electrical signals, aiming to speed transmission by linking AI computing chips with memory chips, an increasingly valuable prospect as hyperscalers and governments spend hundreds of billions of dollars for achieving AI infrastructure supremacy.
The company competes with firms such as Celestial AI, which raised $250 million last March, as well as Lumentum and Coherent, which received $2 billion each in investments from Nvidia on Monday.
Ayar plans to use the new funds to scale production and test capacity, expand global operations, including at its new Hsinchu, Taiwan-based office and accelerate the deployment of its co-packaged optics solution.