Ephos
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NATO-backed chip startup Ephos raises $8.5 mln for Italian operations
Chip startup Ephos, which is part of a NATO programme to encourage defence innovation, said it has raised $8.5 million towards a Milan research and production facility.
The European firm, whose technology spans several areas seen as promising for computer chip advances, also said it had received a 450,000 euro ($500,000) grant from NATO’s Defence Innovation Accelerator, which was launched in 2023.
Ephos makes photonic chips, which use light instead of electricity, which means faster chips that generate less heat. It also uses glass, rather than silicon, as a base for its chips, which promises less signal loss and denser connections.
Ephos wants to shatter the market for AI and quantum chips with a new design based on glass
A theoretical physicist believes he has made a breakthrough in photonics research that will enable us to have faster and better processors — a major need in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and other tech with heavy workloads. Now, his startup has received early backing from NATO, the European government, and other key investors to produce those chips.
Ephos has raised $8.5 million in seed funding that it will use to build out and operate a new R&D and manufacturing facility near Milan focused on glass-based quantum photonics.
There are others like Ephos with bight ideas about photonics, including Xanadu (valued at $1 billion), Photonic (backed by Microsoft), Oxford spinout Orca (backed by the U.S. DoD) and more. But Ephos, with its focus on chips, says that its facility will be the “world’s first dedicated to producing glass-based quantum photonic circuits.”