Lumai, a developer of optical computing technologies, has secured an investment round totaling more than $10 million. The investment will support the startup’s next stage of growth by advancing product development, increasing its workforce, and expanding the company’s presence in the U.S. Lumai’s optical processor uses low-cost optical components in a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) form factor to deliver 50 times the performance of silicon processors while using 10 percent of the power. Courtesy of Lumai. Lumai is creating optical processor technologies to accelerate large language models (LLMs) and other transformer-based AI. The University of Oxford spinout's technology processes AI’s core arithmetic operations within optical beams traveling through 3D space, bypassing the limits of silicon GPUs and integrated photonics. The company utilizes low-cost optical components and a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) form factor to enable cost-effective, high-performance AI inference. According to Lumai, the technology will deliver 50 times the performance of silicon-only accelerators while using just 10 percent of the power required for AI in data centers, lowering both capital costs and total cost of ownership. The financing round was led by Constructor Capital, with support from existing investor IP Group, and new investors including PhotonVentures, Journey Ventures, LIFTT, Qubits Ventures, State Farm Ventures, and TIS Inc.