Salience Labs is an Oxford-based developer of all-optical circuit switches for AI datacentre networks. Its silicon photonics switches use light rather than electronics to route data, aiming to remove the latency, power and cost overhead of optical transceivers in electrical switches. The OC-32M all-optical switch module was launched in March 2026 with 32 ports, and a 64-port silicon photonic optical circuit switch was demonstrated at ECOC 2026 in September 2026. Products with 128 and 256 ports are planned.

The company was spun out of the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in 2021, building on more than a decade of research into silicon photonics. Its architecture integrates photonic chips with standard electronics and uses proprietary optical amplification to connect thousands of GPUs across multiple racks. The switches are designed for high-volume manufacturing using conventional semiconductor processes. In February 2026 Salience Labs agreed with Tower Semiconductor to manufacture its optical circuit switches, and in March 2026 it collaborated with Keysight Technologies on an optical circuit switch testing environment.

Salience Labs was founded by Vaysh Kewada (CEO) and Johannes Feldmann (CTO). It raised a $11.5M seed round in May 2022, a $30M Series A in February 2025 and a $125M Series B in October 2026 led by Bullhound Capital. Participants in the Series B included AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank, alongside existing investors such as Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures. The company has offices in the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States, and plans to expand its presence in Silicon Valley.