A theoretical physicist believes he's made a breakthrough in photonics research that could lead to faster, more powerful processors — a big need for artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other intensive technologies — and now his startup is getting early backing from NATO, European governments and other major investors to build such chips.
Ephos has raised $8.5 million in seed funding to build and operate a new research, development and manufacturing facility near Milan focused on glass-based quantum photonics.
Like Ephos, there are other companies with big photonics ideas, including Xanadu (valued at $1 billion), Photonik (backed by Microsoft) and Oxford University spinout Orca (backed by the US Department of Defense), but Ephos is focused on chips and says its facility will be “the world's first purpose-built facility for the fabrication of glass-based quantum photonic circuits.”
Ephos CEO Andrea Rocchetto (pictured), an Italian theoretical physicist, said the idea to build Ephos and establish it in Italy came to him at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
After studying in Rome, London and Oxford, he was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin when the pandemic hit.
“When I came back to Italy and reconnected with the community here, I realized there was a huge pool of talent, completely outside of the big trends in technology,” he said. “There were no startups developing quantum technologies.” In 2022, he teamed up with three other highly talented quantum and computer science researchers, Francesco Ceccarelli, Giacomo Corrieri, and Roberto Osellame, to found Ephos to fill that void.
In Lockett's view, the gap is not merely a geographic one, but a technological one.
Computing infrastructure is under strain, as evidenced by the huge revenues being made by companies like NVIDIA and the huge bills big AI companies are paying to train and run models. But it's not just AI; new innovations like quantum computing are also putting strain on the hardware we have today. In the U.S. alone, Lockett says, about 9% of the energy generated in the U.S. goes to running data centers, and there's a demand to make them faster and more efficient. “Both photonics and quantum computing can help meet those needs,” he says.
Using chips that process light, specifically photons, is one very efficient way of transferring data, and Ephos believes that building photonics chips using (glass) optical fibers provides the best foundation for these chips, with the lowest chance of photon loss. “Glass helps a lot in that regard,” he says. “Our competitors' chips are made from silicon, but light doesn't like to go from one material to another. By building the entire infrastructure on glass, we can significantly reduce the coupling loss between the fiber and the chip.”
Ephos has one foot in the deep tech world and the other in the world of commercialization opportunities. Its quantum facility is already open, and some of the funding was raised earlier this year, but the first chips haven't been manufactured yet. But they should be shipping within a few weeks. “And we expect the factory to be fully operational by the end of the year,” Lockett said.
While interest has initially come from quantum computing startups, he added that there has also been interest from large tech companies building their own data centers, as well as so-called “hyperscalers,” the data center builders that partner with them. The list of companies investing provides an interesting clue as to who those hyperscalers might be.
The round was led by US-based Starlight Ventures, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Exor Ventures, 2100 Ventures and Unruly Capital. Angel investors in the round include Simone Severini (GM of Quantum Technologies at Amazon Web Services), Diego Piacentini (former Senior VP at Amazon) and Joe Zadeh (former VP at Airbnb). Ephos is also backed by the European Innovation Council (EIC) and NATO's Defence Innovation Accelerator (aka DIANA).
The fact that Ephos is located in Europe is no small detail. Amid geopolitical and macroeconomic instability, there is a major movement happening around the world for regions to further strengthen their own infrastructure across a range of verticals, collectively known as “resilience.” In this case, Ephos is also receiving support from the European Innovation Council (EIC) and NATO's Defense Innovation Accelerator (aka DIANA).
While Ephos sees its biggest opportunity in serving computing needs, “as a company we are very interested in building connections across the Atlantic,” Lockett said. “We strongly believe that defence is a crucial area for our growth because historically the defence sector has been one of the first buyers of new computing technology, so we're keeping a close eye on that area.”