Optalysys secures £21m Series A funding to advance photonic computing technology

Optalysys has secured £21m in a Series A funding round led by Lingotto, imec.xpand, and Northern Gritstone. The capital will be deployed to advance the company's photonic computing technology, enabling fully homomorphic encryption to operate at scale. The funds will also support team expansion across England, Europe, and the United States, alongside the launch of cloud-based services and accelerator programmes.

Fully homomorphic encryption allows computations on encrypted data without prior decryption, closing a significant security vulnerability in cloud systems. Conventional processors struggle with the heavy computational load required for such encryption, but Optalysys has created an advanced photonic semiconductor to overcome this bottleneck. The latest investment marks a major milestone for the founders following decades of research into optical computing.