Volantis 获 8800 万美元 A 轮融资，用光子互连为大模型推理提速

This team is working to bring a MASSIVE 10,000 tokens/second/user on models above 10T parameters.

Volantis wants to cut coding-agent runs from 30 minutes to 30 seconds by feeding AI chips memory over light.

Sam Altman, Jeff Dean and John Doerr are among the backers of the $97M it has raised so far.

A single HBM memory stack is about 11mm long, longer than copper can reach. That limit is why Nvidia's best GPUs fit only 8 stacks each. Volantis uses light to wire over 220 memory chips into a single shared pool.

Volantis builds its optical waveguides directly into the chip package instead of using fiber cables. Each waveguide is over 2500x smaller than optical fiber. That density packs tens of thousands of light channels into the package.

Volantis claims well under 1 picojoule per bit, under 5ns latency and over 200TB/s in total.

Today's AI chips force a choice between memory capacity and memory speed. SRAM moves data very fast but holds too little to fit giant models, while HBM holds far more but moves data slower, which caps tokens per second.

But Volantis is connecting hundreds of memory chips over light, and their bandwidth adds up as each joins.
So Capacity and speed grow together here.