# Neurophos

> Neurophos is an Austin-based photonics startup building an Optical Processing Unit (OPU) that uses light instead of electrons to run AI inference. Spun out of Duke University and the Metacept incubator, the company packs more than a million micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators - roughly 10,000x smaller than conventional photonic elements - onto a single chip to perform the matrix-vector multiplication at the heart of large AI models. It positions the OPU as an energy-efficient, drop-in alternative to GPUs for data-center inference, and raised a $110M Series A led by Gates Frontier in January 2026.

- **Founded:** 2021
- **Headquarters:** Austin, Texas, United States
- **Founders:** Patrick T. Bowen (CEO & Co-Founder), Andrew Traverso (Co-Founder)
- **Team size:** ~55 employees
- **Products:** Optical Processing Unit (OPU), Metasurface optical modulator, Folded Goodman engine / optical systolic array, Developer Partner Program
- **Notable:** Raised a $110M Series A led by Gates Frontier in January 2026, bringing total funding to about $117-118M., Developed a metamaterial optical modulator roughly 10,000x smaller than prior photonic elements, enabling over one million optical processing elements on a single chip., Published performance targets of ~235 POPS at 675W, compared against an Nvidia B200's ~9 POPS at 1000W.

## Products & services

- **Optical Processing Unit (OPU)** — A photonic AI inference chip that integrates more than one million micron-scale metamaterial optical modulators to perform matrix-vector multiplication with light. Designed as an energy-efficient, drop-in replacement for data-center GPUs.
- **Metasurface optical modulator** — The core building block - a micron-scale metamaterial modulator roughly 10,000x smaller than conventional photonic elements, making dense, manufacturable optical computing possible.
- **Folded Goodman engine / optical systolic array** — A folded-pipeline optical systolic array clocked at ~56 GHz that streams data through analog in-memory optical compute, targeting exaflop-scale throughput on a single chip.
- **Developer Partner Program** — PyTorch-based software models and early-access developer hardware that let customers compile their models and evaluate throughput and efficiency before commercial chips ship.

## Achievements

- Raised a $110M Series A led by Gates Frontier in January 2026, bringing total funding to about $117-118M.
- Developed a metamaterial optical modulator roughly 10,000x smaller than prior photonic elements, enabling over one million optical processing elements on a single chip.
- Published performance targets of ~235 POPS at 675W, compared against an Nvidia B200's ~9 POPS at 1000W.
- Assembled a team of chip and photonics veterans from Nvidia, Apple, Intel, AMD, Meta, ARM and Lightmatter.
- Attracted strategic investors spanning software (M12), energy (Aramco Ventures), industrials (Bosch Ventures) and climate (Carbon Direct).

## Latest updates

- **2026-01** — Announced a $110M Series A led by Gates Frontier to build data-center-ready photonic compute systems and expand engineering in Austin and San Francisco.
- **2026-02** — Detailed its metamaterials-based OPU roadmap, including a 56 GHz optical systolic array and targets toward exaflop-scale, single-chip AI compute.
- **2026** — Opened a developer partner program with PyTorch models and early-access hardware; first commercial chips targeted for 2028.

## Links

- Website: https://neurophos.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neurophos

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/neurophos
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-18