Photonic computing startup Optalysys has raised £23 million ($31m) in a Series A extension round.

The round was led by Northern Gritstone and saw participation from imec.xpand, Lingotto Horizon, and the UK government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF).

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Leeds, UK, Optalysys has designed a photonic chip that combines silicon photonics with “cutting-edge digital technologies,” integrating data movement and processing onto a single interface in order to deliver the “immense computational power” required for AI workloads and cloud infrastructure.

The company has also developed what it describes as the world’s first “dedicated hardware solution” for encrypted blockchain applications. Dubbed LightLocker, the technology supports fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), which allows data to be processed securely while remaining encrypted, a capability that the company said is increasingly important for secure cloud and enterprise computing.

“We are at a defining moment in the evolution of computing. Photonic computing opens up fundamentally new capabilities, allowing data to be moved and processed with far greater speed and efficiency,” said Dr. Nick New, CEO and co-founder of Optalysys. “This investment validates both the scale of the opportunity ahead and our ability to execute against it. It allows us to expand into new markets and take an important step towards making photonic computing a mainstream part of cloud infrastructure.”

Robert Todd, the company’s CTO and co-founder, added: “Recent acquisitions in the semiconductor industry have highlighted the role that photonics can play in addressing the limits of electronic computing, particularly in processing capability and power consumption, resulting from the demands of training and running even larger AI models… Expanding to the US is an exciting and natural next step for us, so that we can tap into its strong photonics ecosystem and the immense talent located in Silicon Valley.”