Alphabet's CapitalG joined Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners in a primary investment round for Celero Communications. The startup raised $275 million, giving it a valuation above $3 billion. Celero develops coherent digital signal processor chips to accelerate data movement over fiber between AI racks and nearby data centers to resolve bandwidth limits in scaling AI clusters. The company targets hyperscalers as customers and competes with networking players including Broadcom, Marvell and Cisco.
Founded two years ago by networking veterans Nariman Yousefi and Oscar Agazzi, the company is building its hardware on TSMC’s 2nm process. Celero has validated its first chip and schedules production to begin next year. These optical DSPs aim to improve data transfer between AI racks and data centers as scaling large clusters requires more efficient networking.