Retym Inc., a technology company specializing in semiconductors for cloud and artificial intelligence data center connectivity, today announced its launch, accompanied by $75 million in a Series D funding led by Spark Capital.

Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield and Fidelity Investments also participated in this round, bringing the total funding for the startup to more tha $180 million.

Pronounced “re-time,” Retym focuses on developing programmable coherent digital signal processing or DSP solutions for cloud data centers and AI infrastructure. This semiconductor technology is used for enabling high-speed data transmissions between data centers and within data centers themselves.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Sachin Gandhi told SiliconANGLE in an interview that as AI workloads continue to grow in size and complexity, so do the needs for data connectivity speeds and efficiency.

Today’s data centers contain thousands or millions of graphics processing units separated into clusters and racks, all connected via a backend network. They in turn connect to optical modules, which are commonly used to connect longer distances between buildings or data centers.

Retym’s DSP semiconductor technology is built into these optical modules, which are needed to allow signals to cross longer distances. But they also provide faster speeds, which makes them ideal for within the data center as well.

“What is really happening is coherent technology is moving,” Gandhi said. “It’s between data centers, but it’s also moving inside the data center as speed will increase. We are building the core and DSPs will target this next AI infrastructure and cloud connectivity evolution.”

Gandhi explained that the boundaries between “inside-the-data center” and “data center interconnect” are beginning to blur as AI model training and inference needs continue to advance. According to market research firm Dell’Oro Group, the global spending on data center compute and networking is expected to exceed $1 trillion by the end of the decade, which will position optical networking and DSP solutions at the top of the list for AI cloud infrastructure.

“There is always a bottleneck when it comes to data,” Gandhi said. “To avoid the bottleneck, what we do is spend a lot on infrastructure. We increase our speeds from 400 gigabits to 800 gigabits, and from 800 gigabits to 1.6 terabits. We used to see this speed increase happen every four years. Now it’s happening every two years.”

Gandhi said he believes Retym is launching at the right time to capture the AI infrastructure market’s requirement for speed and efficiency to stay competitive both inside and between data centers as this pressure increases.

“Coherent optics and the DSPs that drive them are becoming increasingly crucial for AI-driven data centers as data volumes and performance requirements continue to rise,” said Vlad Kozlov, founder and CEO of the research firm LightCounting. “The ongoing evolution of this market highlights the need for innovative and efficient solutions.”

With the new fundraise, Gandhi said Retym will move toward finalizing the production of its coherent DSPs and bring them to market before the end of the year.

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