California-Based CScale Raises $145M in Series C Funding

Why the Funding Matters

CScale plans to use the funding to expand its operations and development efforts.

The company is focused on building optical interconnect infrastructure for future AI data centers, where thousands of accelerators may need to communicate continuously across multiple racks.

CScale is also developing its interconnect technology to contain optical failures without interrupting compute.

Who founded CScale?

CScale was founded in 2023 by Sanjai Kohli, and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

The company brings engineering experience from organizations including Cisco, Microsoft, Cadence, Broadcom and Intel.

“As AI scale up domains extend across dozens of racks, optical interconnect becomes essential,” said Martin Lund, CEO of CScale. At that scale, reliable, predictable communication is fundamental to system economics. Easier part replacement improves serviceability not continuity. We are designing the interconnect for continuity. Lasers will fail. Compute shouldn’t.”

“AI infrastructure is no longer just a compute problem. It is a systems problem,” said Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Atreides Management. “As scale-up systems move toward gigawatt-class deployments, interconnect bandwidth means nothing without system reliability. Every optical failure is a compute failure.

Market and Business Growth

CScale is developing infrastructure for gigawatt-class AI data centers expected to emerge by the end of the decade.

Its technology is designed for scale-up systems spanning thousands of tightly coupled accelerators across dozens of racks.

The company aims to address reliability challenges that can emerge when large numbers of optical links operate across AI infrastructure.