Arago

Synopsys Inc and Arago — two companies operating at the forefront of semiconductor innovation — today announce a collaboration to deliver a fundamentally new class of AI inference processors. Arago has achieved a breakthrough at the intersection of optics and digital processing, overcoming the thermodynamic limits that constrain today’s most powerful AI processors and the expansion of AI infrastructure. This hybrid technology represents a major leap in what is physically achievable in AI compute and is designed to power the next era of agentic AI. Synopsys is excited to support Arago’s vision as the company’s strategic IP provider, contributing its industry-leading advanced IP portfolio to Arago’s next-generation high-throughput processor roadmap. This collaboration reflects Synopsys’ commitment to empowering the world’s most innovative chip designers and ensuring advanced IP is available to enable the new physics shaping the future of compute.

Today, we're announcing a landmark milestone for Arago and the semiconductor industry: the successful production of the world's first digital-optical AI chip in standard silicon. Arago's day-zero thesis was that by 2030, AI will be integrated into every industry, every product, and every job. Entire economies will be built on AI, and end users will access it just as they do the internet. Our vision has become consensus but the infrastructure to deliver it hasn't. That infrastructure is what we're building. When it comes to manipulating data at enormous scale, light wins. This is why our entire global infrastructure runs on fiber optics. We borrow from this principle by fusing semiconductor reliability with light speed to power the agentic era. We're grateful to our partners, Cadence and GlobalFoundries, with whom we will continue to deepen our work. Read the full story in Sifted: https://lnkd.in/g_nY2wMf

Big milestones, new memories, hello Lisbon! Few weeks ago we touched down in Portugal for Arago’s second offsite – a special moment to celebrate our wins, reflect on how far we’ve come, and gear up for what’s next. BBQ, spikeball tournaments, and walks along the coast were on the agenda. Spooky how fast the team has grown! If you’d like to be part of chapter 3, check out our careers page! 👋

Arago is proud to join Sifted’s Rising AI 100 for 2025, recognising Europe’s most promising AI companies. As the youngest hardware company on the list, this acknowledgement reflects the pace and pragmatism of the engineering work that our team delivers every day. See the full list here: https://lnkd.in/eqsjxeBt

AI is gated by today’s hardware. If you're excited about shaping the future of computing and AI, and doing the most meaningful work of your career, visit our career page at https://lnkd.in/dbw25zWa. Credit: Albin MERLE

After a year of quiet work, we’re proud to share that Arago has raised $26 million in seed funding, to lead the shift to light-based computing. This round was co-led by Earlybird Venture Capital, Protagonist and Visionaries Tomorrow, with strong support from deeptech and semiconductor investors, AI specialists, and exited founders. We’re pleased to be joined by GenerativeIQ, C4 Ventures, Acequia Capital, Bertrand Serlet (former VP at Apple, co-founder of Fungible), Christophe Frey (GM at Arm), Olivier Pomel (co-founder of Datadog), Thomas Wolf (co-founder of Hugging Face), among others, and to benefit from the continued support of David Fattal, Jean-Laurent Philippe, and Pierre Boudier. This funding represents a significant milestone in our mission to build the first enterprise-grade AI processor powered by light. Our results to date demonstrate that Arago’s technology can seamlessly run AI models using industry-standard software frameworks, while remaining fully compatible with existing compute infrastructure, and semiconductor manufacturing processes. A critical milestone for real-world performance and adoption. With this capital, we will accelerate R&D, scale our team across France, Israel, and North America, and deepen strategic business and industrial partnerships to bring our technology to market. Stay tuned, more updates are on the way.