US AI Chipmaker Neurophos Raises $110 Million With Aramco Backing

US-based Neurophos has raised $110 million in a Series A funding round to advance its energy-efficient photonic AI inference technology, with Aramco Ventures participating alongside Gates Frontier, M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund), and a group of global investors.

Founded in 2020 by Dr Patrick Bowen and Dr Andrew Traverso, Neurophos develops photonic computing systems designed to reduce the energy demands of artificial intelligence workloads in data centres. The company positions its technology as an alternative to conventional silicon-based chips, which face mounting power and efficiency constraints as AI deployment scales.

The new funding will support the launch of Neurophos’ first integrated photonic compute system, including data centre–ready optical processing unit modules, a full software stack, and early-access developer hardware. The company also plans to expand its engineering operations from its headquarters in Austin, Texas, to a new site in San Francisco to meet early commercial demand.

Aramco Ventures’ participation connects the investment to wider Middle East priorities around energy efficiency and next-generation digital infrastructure. As Gulf countries accelerate investment in AI, cloud computing and data centres under economic diversification programmes, the energy cost of large-scale compute has become a growing concern.

Neurophos said its optical architecture allows performance and efficiency to improve as systems scale, helping address power limits associated with traditional GPU-based AI infrastructure. The company’s technology is designed for AI training, inference and large-scale data centre deployments, areas increasingly central to AI strategies in the Middle East and beyond.