Solinide raises €4M to commercialise photonic chip tech for data centres

Solinide Photonics has closed a €4 million seed round to push its silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits from lab tech toward commercial use. The company says the money will help it get ready for scalable manufacturing and bring its patented approach into data centres.

That matters because AI infrastructure keeps demanding more data movement between chips, and the power bill is already a problem. Solinide’s answer is a chip-based system that can replace racks of separate lasers with one device generating dozens of precise wavelengths at once. In theory, that means more data over each fibre using less electricity, with less cost and a smaller footprint for every optical link.

The round was co-led by Navigare Ventures and PSV Hafnium, with Chalmers Ventures, Turbine Capital, Norrsken Evolve and Almi Greentech Fund also backing it. Solinide says the wider group brings industrial and company-building experience, which should help as the startup tries to move from technology readiness to commercialisation and market adoption.

Marcello Girardo, Solinide’s CEO, said the company has already shown its microcomb technology can meet datacentre-link performance needs and can be integrated into a rack-mounted product. The next step is less glamorous and more important: commercial readiness, launch, and actual deployment.

There’s also a regional angle here. Much of the AI and datacentre photonics supply chain sits in the US and Asia, and Solinide wants to strengthen Sweden and Europe’s position in semiconductor and photonics hardware. If it works, the upside reaches beyond AI data centres into telecommunications and other growth markets. If it doesn’t, it becomes another elegant answer to a very expensive problem.