Intel Capital Leads $25M Investment In Israeli Connectivity Startup DustPhotonics

Israeli startup DustPhotonics, which designs and manufactures high-end, cost-effective, short-to-medium-reach optical transceivers and active optical cables for cloud, data center, high-performance computing, and enterprise applications, announced the closure of a $25 million Series B funding round led by Intel Capital, the corporate VC arm of Intel. Additional investors include global VC firm WRVI Capital and veteran entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz. 

DustPhotonics says the latest round will help fund its expansion plans and global market presence.

“High speed optical connectivity is essential to enabling the performance and scale of today’s data centers,” said Hong Hou, VP of the Data Center Group and General Manager of the Silicon Photonics division at Intel. “The DustPhotonics products complement our leading optical transceiver portfolio through short-reach, standards-based interconnects based on VCSEL technology.”

“Dust Photonics is uniquely positioned to address the ever-growing need for high-performance connectivity. We are highly impressed by the innovative solutions the company has developed” added Lip Bu Tan, founding managing partner of WRVI Capital.

Ben Rubovitch, CEO and co-founder of DustPhotonics said the company was “honored to have Intel Capital lead this round, which will help accelerate our vision of next-generation optical connectivity.”

“Our optical transceiver products address the key and challenging requirements for hyperscale applications, and we will also leverage our electro-optic technology in high-density, future architectures,” he added.

DustPhotonics was founded in 2017 with offices in Modi’in, Israel and Cupertino California