AI infrastructure connectivity startup Eliyan Corporation has raised $145 million in Series C funding, valuing the company at $1 billion as it looks to scale its technology for future AI compute and networking systems.

The round was led by Seligman Ventures and included participation from Cisco Investments and Lumentum, marking the addition of two strategic investors with deep ties to networking, semiconductors and optical technologies. The funding also brings Seligman Ventures managing partner Umesh Padval onto Eliyan’s board.

Eliyan plans to use the capital to expand its electro-optical interconnect technology development, strengthen ecosystem partnerships and scale manufacturing as demand grows for high-performance AI infrastructure.

The company focuses on solving one of the biggest challenges facing AI systems: moving data efficiently between compute, memory and networking components. As AI models grow larger and data centres transition toward rack-scale and cluster-scale architectures, bandwidth limitations, power consumption and connectivity bottlenecks have become increasingly important constraints.

Eliyan’s technology portfolio includes Die-to-Die, Chip-to-Chip and Rack-to-Rack chiplet interconnect solutions designed for advanced AI architectures. Its NuLink PHYs and NuGear chiplet families provide scalable connectivity across electrical and optical domains, supporting applications from package-level integration to large-scale AI infrastructure networks.

The company said its move into optical interconnect complements its existing electrical connectivity expertise and positions it to support the industry’s shift toward heterogeneous computing systems, co-packaged architectures and higher-bandwidth AI fabrics.

The financing follows increasing commercial interest from hyperscale cloud providers, AI chip developers, memory suppliers and infrastructure companies testing or adopting Eliyan’s technologies.

Eliyan CEO and co-founder Ramin Farjadrad said traditional system connectivity methods are reaching their limits as AI infrastructure evolves, and the new funding will help accelerate commercialization and customer adoption.

Umesh Padval said AI data centres will increasingly depend on efficient electrical and optical interconnect technologies to scale performance, highlighting Eliyan’s technical expertise, more than 100 patents and support from 12 strategic investors as key reasons behind Seligman Ventures’ investment.