Enabling the Silicon Photonics Revolution: How This Israeli Company is Solving the Connectivity Bottleneck Amid the AI and HPC revolution reshaping the semiconductor industry, Teramount addresses the crucial fiber connectivity challenge, enabling seamless optical data movement.

By Benjamin Huang

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As the semiconductor industry undergoes a seismic shift driven by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), optical connectivity has emerged as a critical enabler of next-generation data movement. Semiconductor giants such as NVIDIA, AMD, TSMC, Broadcom, and Marvell are spearheading efforts to advance optical connectivity solutions, forming the foundation of future AI infrastructure.

Alongside these giants, emerging startups like CelestialAI, Lightelligence, and Lightmatter are addressing specific challenges in silicon photonics, developing innovative solutions to meet the growing demands of AI clusters and data centers. However, despite these advancements, one fundamental challenge remains unsolved: scalable fiber connectivity.

The Fiber Connectivity Bottleneck in Optical Connectivity

Enter Teramount, an Israeli startup that provides a critical missing link in the silicon photonics ecosystem. Unlike companies creating photonic chips, Teramount focuses on the horizontal problem of fiber-to-chip integration, a necessary component for enabling scalable optical connectivity in AI and advanced computing systems. Without this key technological solution, the industry risks hitting a bottleneck that could slow progress in AI infrastructure.

The push for more efficient data movement is driving billions of dollars in investment into optical connectivity. Recent funding rounds reflect this momentum, especially from startups. However, this trend is not limited to emerging companies.

Established players like NVIDIA, Marvell, and Broadcom, as well as major hyperscalers, foundries, and OSATs, are investing significant funds in developing next-generation optical solutions. These investments underscore a critical realization: traditional copper interconnects cannot meet the power, bandwidth, and latency requirements of modern AI workloads. Optical solutions are essential. However, one challenge remains consistent across the board: fiber connectivity between photonic chips is still a major bottleneck in scaling these technologies for mass deployment.

Teramount CoFounders Avi Israel (Left) and Hesham Taha (Right).

Teramount's Horizontal Role Across the Ecosystem

Optical connectivity offers immense promise, but the demands of AI architectures bring new challenges that require deeper integration between photonics and semiconductor technologies. Packaging a large number of optical fibers into advanced 3D packaging architectures for AI applications, poses unique hurdles beyond cost and performance improvements; it requires connectivity solutions that enable seamless integration at scale. Existing methods fall short of addressing these challenges effectively. Teramount's Universal Photonic Coupler is a game-changer in this space. Teramount's solution offers advanced packaging architectures viable for the AI era. These architectures include self-aligning optics and detachable fiber connectors.

Unlike companies that develop specific photonic chips or optical solutions, Teramount plays a horizontal role across the ecosystem. Its technology can be integrated by a wide range of players, from chip or system vendors and silicon photonics startups, to large semiconductor foundries and hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Teramount's approach is to make fiber connectivity a commodity — an essential building block for a wide array of use cases, from data centers to AI clusters.

The Universal Photonic Coupler: Simplifying Fiber Packaging

At the heart of Teramount's approach is the Universal Photonic Coupler: a patented solution that simplifies the packaging of optical fibers to photonic chips. This solution benefits from wafer level manufacturing processes for high precision alignment of optics, significantly improving scalability. Unlike traditional bonded fiber solutions, Teramount's connectors are detachable, which makes them suitable for AI optical connectivity, volume manufacturable, serviceable, and cost-effective. The Universal Photonic Coupler is a versatile solution for the entire industry because it is suitable for a wide range of silicon photonics platforms.

Consider the recent surge in co-packaged optics (CPO), where photonic chips and advanced processors are integrated into the same package. Major players, from hyperscalers to chip manufacturers, are advancing CPO as the most viable optical connectivity platform for AI architectures. But none of these efforts will fly without the appropriate building blocks. Teramount bridges this gap by providing a detachable fiber connectivity solution that enables CPO players to scale their products for mass deployment. The industry is already in the process of moving to CPO as the required format for AI and advanced computing. This transition generates new constraints, and it seems that Teramount's unique technology has the right product and technology to make CPO viable.

Looking Ahead: The Future of AI and Advanced Computing

As AI models grow in complexity, the demand for high-speed, low-latency, and power-efficient data movement will only increase. Connectivity has emerged as a critical bottleneck, consuming a significant portion of power in AI systems. This power consumption results in dissipated heat, which impacts the efficiency of AI processors and drives up cooling costs in data centers. Solving the connectivity challenge is essential for optimizing overall system performance and enabling the next phase of AI infrastructure.

Hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are allocating substantial resources to develop next-generation data centers, as are new entrants like Elon Musk's planned AI-focused data centers. Teramount is carving out a unique role in this transformation. By solving the fiber connectivity bottleneck, Teramount offers something crucial — the missing piece in the puzzle that allows the optical connectivity revolution to scale and meet the growing global demand for advanced AI infrastructure.

Recent developments make it clear that the optical connectivity revolution is underway, driven by the need for faster, more efficient data movement in AI and advanced computing. The semiconductor industry, including both startups and established players, is developing cutting-edge photonic solutions. Teramount plays a critical enabling role by solving the fiber connectivity challenge. With its Universal Photonic Coupler, Teramount can help ensure these innovations can scale for mass deployment, positioning it as an indispensable player in the future of AI infrastructure

Benjamin Huang writes on business and entrepreneurship. He has been observing and tracking business trends in the APAC region for over 15 years and loves to analyze emerging trends in this field.  
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