Neurophos has secured $7.2 million in seed funding in a round led by Gates Frontier. The company aims to leverage metamaterials to create a proprietary metasurface that will serve as a tensor core processor with advanced optical properties.
The use of photonics in optical computing AI workloads has the potential to significantly reduce power consumption and increase compute speeds. However, the success of optical compute for AI has been limited due to the large size and bulkiness of existing optical devices. Neurophos aims to overcome this challenge with metamaterials, which enable new ways of controlling the flow of light. Their optical metasurfaces, designed for data centers, have already demonstrated notable computational energy efficiency.
Neurophos spun out from Duke University and Metacept Inc. It’s headquartered in Durham, North Carolina but plans to use some of the seed funding to hire a team of Austin-based engineers to accelerate product development.
