News: Optoelectronics
25 September 2026
PicoJool raises $27.5m in Series A round led by Socratic Partners, joined by HRT
PicoJool Inc of Palo Alto, CA, USA (which is developing optical chips and modules for high-bandwidth, low-cost connectivity in hyperscale AI data centers) has raised $27.5m in Series A funding led by Socratic Partners, with participation from Hudson River Trading (HRT). Following a $12m seed round led by Playground Global, this brings total funding to $39.5m.
PicoJool will use the funding to expand its teams and facilities in the USA and Taiwan as it brings its vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) and optical link products to market. The firm plans to grow its R&D, operations, sales and marketing organizations while building the capacity needed to qualify, manufacture and support its products for hyperscalers and data-center operators.
“Reaching 200G per lane proved that the performance is there. Our focus now is execution,” says founder & CEO Al Yuen. “This funding allows us to expand our teams in the US and Taiwan, qualify products with customers and move a complete portfolio from chip-level VCSELs and micro-VCSELs into AOC [active optical cable] and NPO [near-packaged optics] modules,” he adds. “We are building the connectivity platform customers will need for the next decade of AI infrastructure.”
AI clusters are increasing both the number of processors in a system and the volume of data moving between them, placing growing pressure on interconnect performance and data-center power budgets. PicoJool is applying the cost and manufacturing advantages of VCSEL technology to a portfolio of optical connectivity products designed to scale from 800G to 1.6T, 3.2T and beyond. The company is also seeing growing customer interest in its micro-VCSEL products, including 50G NRZ configuration for optical compute interconnects and 64G NRZ/PAM4 configurations for PCIe 6.0-based NPO applications.
Picojool has started early sampling of its chip-level VCSEL products ahead of broader availability.
PicoJool’s portfolio includes high-speed VCSEL (100G, 200G) products and lower-power micro-VCSEL (50G NRZ, 64G NRZ/PAM4) configurations. The micro-VCSEL platform uses a massively parallel architecture to increase aggregate bandwidth while reducing the energy required to move each bit of data, addressing a critical constraint for hyperscale AI systems.
“Moving data efficiently dictates how quickly and economically AI scales,” notes Greg Waters, general partner at Socratic Partners. “PicoJool combines a proven team with a unique approach that brings VCSEL technology’s cost and manufacturing advantages to AI-scale bandwidth and power needs,” he comments. “They are poised to become a vital connectivity platform for next-generation data centers.”
The Series A funding round follows June’s unveiling of PicoJool’s 200G VCSEL and micro-VCSEL product family for scale-up AI data centers. The 200G products exceed 37GHz of bandwidth, and the portfolio includes quad 100G, quad 200G and 32x50G NRZ micro-VCSEL configurations that give customers multiple paths to 1.6T connectivity based on their bandwidth, power and system requirements.
“The network is the AI, and connectivity is becoming one of the defining constraints on performance. The industry needs a solution that can increase bandwidth while sharply improving power and cost,” notes Pat Gelsinger, general partner at Playground Global. “PicoJool brings together breakthrough VCSEL performance, deep systems expertise and a manufacturing base capable of supporting tremendous scale,” he comments. “The team is well positioned to move quickly from an important technical milestone to products that can reshape how AI infrastructure moves data.”
PicoJool is working with Taiwan-based WIN Semiconductor and other gallium arsenide (GaAs) foundries to ready its 200G VCSELs for production. WIN has shipped more than 1 billion chips over the past decade, bringing significant high-volume manufacturing experience to this work as PicoJool prepares its products for qualification and production. The fim is also working with system companies and hyperscalers to define next-generation pluggable, NPO and co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions.
PicoJool introduces 200G VCSELs for scale-up AI data centers
