PicoJool, an optical connectivity company, emerged from stealth with $12 million in funding led by Playground Global. The company said it has developed a new class of pixel-level photonics to make optical links as inexpensive, compact, and manufacturable as traditional copper connections. The technology leverages VCSELs with unique parallel optics and packaging innovations to deliver high performance at a low cost to compete directly with copper at scale, according to the company. PicoJool integrates its optical chips into massively parallel pluggable modules, with applications specifically targeting large-scale AI systems. The company said it will use the funding to scale manufacturing capabilities and deepen R&D efforts to meet the market need for AI connectivity, including extending its low-cost VCSEL technology into 400G/lane systems and beyond. The PicoJool Terapod is a VCSEL-based parallel optical link compatible with co-package optics, near-packaged optics, and front panel pluggable form factors. It can be configured for 16, 32, or 64 lanes from 1.6T to 6.4T of data bandwidth. Courtesy of PicoJool. “By making high-bandwidth optical connectivity cost-competitive and manufacturable at scale, PicoJool is collapsing the cost and complexity barriers that have held photonics back for decades,” said Pat Gelsinger, general partner at Playground Global. Gelsinger previously served as CEO of Intel from February 2021 to December 2024. He currently chairs the board of extreme-ultraviolet laser technology startup xLight, which closed a $40 million series B funding round in July. PicoJool is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., with R&D and operations in both the U.S. and Taiwan. The company was founded by industry veteran Al Yuen.
