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Celero Communications, a networking chip startup focused on AI data center infrastructure, has raised $275 million in Series C funding at a valuation exceeding $3 billion. The round was led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and CapitalG, with participation from existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures and Maverick Silicon. The Irvine, California-based company also announced successful validation of the industry’s first 2nm coherent DSP silicon, a technology that enables higher-bandwidth, lower-power optical connectivity for AI systems. The funding brings Celero’s total capital raised to $415 million and will accelerate its product roadmap, R&D investments and production readiness. The company, founded in 2024 by veterans from Marvell, Inphi, Broadcom and ClariPhy, is targeting major cloud providers as customers amid surging demand for AI infrastructure.
Key Elements
Celero Communications, a networking chip startup targeting AI data center infrastructure, has secured $275 million in Series C funding, pushing its valuation past the $3 billion mark.
The Irvine, California-based company develops coherent digital signal processors that accelerate data transmission over fiber optic cables, a capability that has become increasingly critical as AI workloads strain traditional networking architectures. The financing brings Celero’s total capital raised to $415 million since its founding in 2024.
The round was led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and CapitalG, the venture capital arm of Alphabet (GOOGL). Existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures and Maverick Silicon also participated. As part of the deal, Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Atreides Management, will join Celero’s board of directors.
Alongside the funding announcement, Celero revealed it has successfully validated what it describes as the industry’s first 2nm coherent DSP silicon, including DSP processing and advanced analog technology. The company said the milestone “establishes a scalable foundation for next-generation AI optical interconnects, enabling higher-bandwidth, lower-power connectivity from 1.6T through 3.2T as hyperscale AI clusters and cloud data centers continue to scale.”
“AI infrastructure is rapidly outgrowing the capabilities of traditional optical interconnect architectures,” said Nariman Yousefi, co-founder and CEO of Celero Communications. “Our 2nm silicon validation demonstrates that coherent technology can deliver the bandwidth density, power efficiency and scalability required for the next generation of AI networks. This investment gives us the resources to accelerate our roadmap, strengthen production readiness and bring the next generation of coherent connectivity to market faster.”
The company said the new capital will accelerate its product roadmap, R&D investments and production readiness as demand grows for higher-bandwidth, lower-power optical connectivity across next-generation AI infrastructure.
The Connectivity Bottleneck
Global data centers are projected to require nearly $7 trillion in investment by 2030, including approximately $5.2 trillion to support AI workloads Connectivity is emerging as a critical bottleneck as AI infrastructure scales, pushing traditional PAM4 optical architectures toward their practical limits in bandwidth density and fiber scalability
Celero is positioning coherent connectivity as the foundational technology for the next generation of scale-up, scale-out and scale-across AI networks, and is targeting the largest cloud companies as customers.
“The next generation of AI compute will depend on the ability to scale connectivity across increasingly large accelerator clusters,” said James Luo, General Partner at CapitalG. “Celero’s breakthrough 2nm coherent DSP technology provides the essential optical foundation that allows AI infrastructure to scale up and across massive data centers, overcoming the physical limits of last-generation technologies.”
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Series C funding | $275 million |
| Post-money valuation | Over $3 billion |
| Total capital raised | $415 million |
| Founded | 2024 |
Note: Figures reflect company disclosures as of September 8, 2026.
Celero was founded by industry veterans from Marvell, Inphi, Broadcom and ClariPhy, with design centers in Canada and Argentina. The company remains privately held with no publicly traded stock, though investor interest in the AI chip sector has been intensifying as hyperscalers race to expand their data center capacity.
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