{"slug": "eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-s-real-bottleneck-moves", "title": "Eliyan raises $145 million at a $1 billion valuation as AI's real bottleneck moves between chips", "summary": "Eliyan, a Santa Clara chiplet interconnect company, introduced NuLink-XD on July 24, a 224G PAM4 SerDes for chip-to-chip and chip-to-module links, claiming 50% less power than typical long-reach SerDes. The product targets AI infrastructure bottlenecks where data movement between chips drives cost and complexity, building on Eliyan's earlier NuLink-2.0 PHY and its CEO Ramin Farjadrad's history as inventor of the Bunch of Wires standard. The company's funding includes a $50 million strategic round from AMD, Arm, Coherent, Meta, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Intel Capital announced January 28, 2026, with a post-money valuation near $1 billion.", "body_md": "*Eliyan's latest move is a 224G interconnect product, not a newly announced $145 million unicorn round. The useful story is narrower and more interesting: AI systems are running into the cost of moving data.*\n\nEliyan still has a timely story. It just isn't the one the draft told. The Santa Clara chiplet interconnect company introduced NuLink-XD on July 24, a 224G PAM4 SerDes aimed at chip-to-chip and chip-to-module links - near-package optics, OSFP, XPO and similar applications. If you're watching AI infrastructure, that is the part worth your attention, because the bottleneck is no longer only the accelerator. It is the link around it.\n\nThe original claim that Eliyan closed a $145 million Series C today led by Seligman Ventures doesn't check out in public sources. Eliyan's own press page shows a different funding record: on January 28, 2026, the company announced $50 million in strategic investments from AMD, Arm, Coherent and Meta, with Samsung Catalyst Fund and Intel Capital also participating. Forge's private-market data lists January 28 Series C and Series C-1 entries with a post-money valuation of about $961.8 million and total funding of $152.32 million. That's close to a unicorn price. It isn't the same as a public $145 million raise.\n\nThat distinction matters. Funding stories are easy to inflate when a private valuation, a strategic round and a product launch sit near each other on the calendar. Don't blur them. A reader can forgive a narrow story. A reader shouldn't have to forgive a made-up round.\n\n## The Product Is The News\n\nNuLink-XD is Eliyan's current public push into the electro-optical side of AI infrastructure. According to Eliyan's technology materials, the new differential PHY supports 224G PAM4 SerDes links and chip-to-module connections for optical modules, with channel loss tolerance of up to 30dB. The company also says NuLink-XD can use 50% less power than a typical 224G long-reach SerDes.\n\nThat power number is the point. Scale-up AI networks use a huge number of short, high-bandwidth links, and each one adds heat and board complexity and drives up operating cost. When a rack is packed with accelerators, memory, switches and optical modules, the interconnect stops being plumbing and starts becoming a design constraint. You don't need to romanticize that. It is physics showing up on the bill.\n\nEliyan has been building toward this for a while. Its NuLink-2.0 PHY, announced in October 2024, delivered first silicon on a 3nm process at 64 gigabits per second per bump, which the company described as the industry's highest performance for a die-to-die PHY in multi-die architectures. The PHY is compatible with UCIe, and Eliyan's technology page says its NuLink approach supports Bunch of Wires and simultaneous bidirectional signaling, where data can move in both directions on the same wire.\n\nFounder and CEO Ramin Farjadrad gives the company a credible claim in that narrow lane. Eliyan identifies him as a co-founder and chief executive, and earlier Eliyan materials credit him as the inventor of the Bunch of Wires scheme adopted by the Open Compute Project. Public profiles also show his earlier work at Marvell and Aquantia. In a chiplet market full of broad promises, that kind of specific standard-setting history counts.\n\n## The Window Is Real, But It Won't Stay Quiet\n\nEliyan isn't alone. Ayar Labs raised $155 million in a Series D in December 2024 and crossed a valuation above $1 billion, according to The Next Platform. Ranovus is also working around co-packaged optics. Broadcom and Marvell don't need a startup's permission to move closer to this market once customers prove the demand.\n\nStill, the timing helps Eliyan. Accuris reported this spring that semiconductor lead times hit 40 weeks in March 2026, with fiber optics and memory ICs showing up among the constrained categories as AI infrastructure demand pressed into the component supply chain. TrendForce also reported that 800G and higher optical transceiver shipments were expected to rise from 24 million units in 2025 to nearly 63 million in 2026. Those are not soft market signals. They are purchase orders looking for parts.\n\nThe spending behind them is large enough to pull obscure suppliers into the light. Enverus Intelligence Research put 2026 capital spending by Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft at roughly $695 billion to $725 billion after late-April earnings updates. A sliver of that moving toward interconnects and optical modules - chiplet links included - is still a serious market for a company of Eliyan's size.\n\nHere's the thing: Eliyan doesn't have to beat Nvidia to matter. It has to make the expensive chips around Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom and custom hyperscaler silicon talk to each other with less power and less packaging pain. That is a smaller ambition, but it is a cleaner one.\n\nThe next test is commercial, not rhetorical. Eliyan's January funding announcement said the money would support manufacturing and qualification of next-generation interconnect IP and chiplet products. Its July product launch adds the electro-optical piece. Now the company has to show that customers will design it into real AI systems, not just applaud the roadmap from the standards room.\n\n**Also read:** [NextEra and Brookfield are turning a Cold War uranium site into a $100 billion AI data center](https://startupfortune.com/nextera-and-brookfield-are-turning-a-cold-war-uranium-site-into-a-100-billion-ai-data-center/) • [GrubMarket files for IPO at $4.5 billion valuation as AI rewires the food supply chain](https://startupfortune.com/grubmarket-files-for-ipo-at-45-billion-valuation-as-ai-rewires-the-food-supply-chain/) • [Pangram raises $9M as Substack bets readers will pay for human writing](https://startupfortune.com/pangram-raises-9m-as-substack-bets-readers-will-pay-for-human-writing/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-s-real-bottleneck-moves", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ais-real-bottleneck-moves-between-chips/", "published_at": "2026-07-29 15:29:54+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-29 16:24:23.778738+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure", "ai-chips"], "entities": ["Eliyan", "NuLink-XD", "Ramin Farjadrad", "AMD", "Arm", "Coherent", "Meta", "Intel Capital"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-s-real-bottleneck-moves", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-s-real-bottleneck-moves.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-s-real-bottleneck-moves.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/eliyan-raises-145-million-at-a-1-billion-valuation-as-ai-s-real-bottleneck-moves.jsonld"}}