Leeds-based chip designer secures £21M investment for ground-breaking tech

A British semiconductor designer, whose innovative light-powered technology holds the potential to address a major data security challenge, has secured substantial funding from investors, including Italy’s affluent Agnelli family.

Optalysys, headquartered in Leeds, recently concluded a Series A funding round of £21 million this month, to facilitate job creation and further advance its journey towards production. Optalysys has been expanding its team with recruits from UK chip companies including Arm, Imagination and Graphcore. It plans to increase its headcount from 18 today, including contractors, to more than 50 in the next 12 months.

Established a decade ago, Optalysys is utilising innovative technology in the realm of silicon photonics, where optical chips employ light instead of electricity for computational tasks. This groundbreaking approach is particularly well-suited for novel encryption methods, enabling more secure and private data exchange among corporations and nations as asserted by its creators.

By radically accelerating processing speeds without a commensurate increase in energy consumption, Optalysys co-founder and chief executive Nick New, who along with co-founder Robert Todd, grew up in Yorkshire, claims the technology can power a new level of encryption that is able to withstand hacking attempts even from quantum computers.

Optalysys is targeting scaled-up production of its chiplet processors in around three years. Its latest equity investment values the company at £20mn, excluding the latest capital raised.