Swiss semiconductor firm Candu AI has successfully raised $225 million in a Series A investment round, as reported by The Next Web on March 28, 2023. Leading the investment was Maverick Silicon, with notable participation from strategic investors including SoftBank, Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Alchip Technologies. Following this round, Candu AI attained a valuation of $400 million.

The AI sector is currently grappling with performance bottlenecks related to the speed of connections between chips. In AI training clusters that consist of thousands of GPUs, the efficiency of data movement between processors and memory significantly influences overall performance. Presently, existing copper interconnects operate at 224 gigabits per second, consuming approximately 30 percent of a cluster’s total power. Moreover, signal quality degradation poses challenges, limiting transmission distance to under one meter without the need for amplifiers.

In response to these challenges, the industry has begun a transition toward optical fibre solutions. For instance, Ayar Labs recently raised $500 million at a valuation of $3.8 billion in March 2026, while Marvell acquired Celestial AI, known for its photonic fabric technology, for $3.25 billion in February. The market for optical interconnects in AI data centres is projected to expand from $3.75 billion in 2025 to an impressive $18.36 billion by 2033.

However, Candu AI contends that copper should not be dismissed. The company asserts its capability to enhance copper link performance to over 448 gigabits per second through the use of coded signalling, while simultaneously reducing power consumption and system costs to one-tenth of current levels.