As demand for artificial intelligence skyrockets, traditional data centers are showing their age. This change has opened doors for photonics, a field using light for data transmission, catching eye of investors like Mi Lei, founder of CAS Star.
Mi,who’s spent over ten years pushing photonics, sees this surge of interest as a long-overdue nod to his vision. “New technologies can drive industrial upgrading,” he said from his Shanghai office, named “Wallfacer” after elite strategists in The Three-Body Problem series by Liu Cixin . His firm, spun out of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has heavily invested in this area, with more than 200 of its roughly 600 portfolio companies focused on photonics,covering sensing, communications,and computing .
The push for innovation in data transmission is urgent. Traditional copper cables, once the backbone of data transfer, are now struggling to keep up with the demands of massive AI models that require constant data sharing among thousands of specialized chips. Copper interconnects face serious issues like signal loss, excessive heat, and high power consumption, creating a bottleneck that slows everything down.
In response,the industry is shifting to optical links that use light instead of electricity,promising lower loss and better efficiency. This change is reshaping data center architecture and catching the attention of investors. One standout is Yuanjie Technology,a laser-chip maker in Shaanxi that CAS Star backed in 2019. Its stock has surged more than elevenfold in the past year, fueled by rising revenue from data-center optical technologies.
As computing evolves,Mi Lei's early bet on photonics is paying off. The merging of AI and advanced optical technologies isn’t just a trend; it’s a major shift in how data will be processed and transmitted in the future .
