16:30 – 16:50
From Electrons to Photons: A Lightmatter Perspective on 3D Photonic Interconnect
Silicon Photonics has become an essential technology to meet the needs of compute demands which are fueling the AI revolution. Lightmatter is a leading co-packaged optics solution provider in this market with a vision of delivering complete vertically-integrated interconnect solutions to the end customers. This talk will focus on Lightmatter’s product and technology portfolio that is enabling unprecedented bandwidth required for leading AI data centers. The talk will highlight some of the key progress made to-date across silicon, package technologies and challenges critical to realizing and scaling these innovations, from novel 3D photonic chip architectures to large scale deployments.
Ritesh Jain
Lightmatter
Ritesh Jain is Senior Vice President, Engineering & Operations at Lightmatter leading cross-functional engineering organizations responsible for driving innovation and delivering products. Previously as VP at Intel, Ritesh led hardware development for data centers. He holds a master’s in semiconductor packaging and during the two plus decades of experience in the semiconductor industry, he drove several generations of data center products into high volume deployments while driving major technology transitions and leading global engineering teams.
Lightmatter
Company Profile
Lightmatter is leading the revolution in AI data center infrastructure and enabling the next giant leaps in human progress. The company was founded in 2017 out of MIT, with two of its co-founders – CEO Nick Harris, Ph.D. and Chief Scientist Darius Bunandar, Ph.D. – renowned as preeminent scientists in the field. Lightmatter has raised $850 million in funding by leading investors including Fidelity, Google Ventures, Sequoia, Spark, T Rowe Price, and Viking, and was most recently valued at $4.4 billion. Initially founded in Boston, Lightmatter moved its headquarters to Mountain View in 2023. It currently employs 230 employees across its headquarters in Silicon Valley, as well as offices in Boston, Toronto, Oregon and Arizona.
Company Products & Services
The company’s groundbreaking Passage™ platform—the world’s first 3D-stacked silicon photonics engine—connects thousands to millions of processors at the speed of light. Designed to eliminate critical data bottlenecks, Lightmatter’s technology enables unparalleled efficiency and scalability for the most advanced AI and high-performance computing workloads, pushing the boundaries of AI infrastructure.
