On September 4, Shanghai Xizhi Technology Co., Ltd., a unicorn enterprise and optoelectronic hybrid computing power provider, announced the completion of its Series C financing round exceeding 1.5 billion yuan. The new round of financing attracted participation from funds under China Mobile, Shanghai Guotou, Guoxin Fund, and Pudong Venture Capital, among others. Existing shareholders such as CAS Star, Yijing Capital, and a leading internet manufacturer continued to add investment.
The founder and CEO of Xizhi Technology, Dr. Shen Yichen, stated that the new financing will be used to accelerate the development of the company’s core technologies and the large-scale implementation of optoelectronic hybrid computing power. He mentioned that large-scale optoelectronic integration technology has reached a critical stage of commercialization. It is expected that within the next five years, photonic chips will account for 30% of intelligent computing centers. Xizhi Technology is driving the innovation of computing infrastructure with disruptive underlying technologies.
Previous Financing Rounds
Xizhi Technology was established in February 2018 and currently has a team of nearly 250 people, with over 80% being R&D personnel. Core members mainly come from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and include well-known industry professionals with extensive experience. The company focuses on two business directions: photonic networks and photonic computing, promoting the transition of optoelectronic hybrid technology from research to industrial application.
During his doctoral studies at MIT, the company’s founder and CEO, Shen Yichen, participated in the development of the world’s first photonic computing system. In 2017, this achievement was published as a cover article in the journal Nature Photonics, with Shen Yichen as the first author. The following year, he founded Xizhi Technology and was selected as a “Visionary” in the inaugural China list of “Innovators Under 35” by MIT Technology Review.
During his doctoral studies at MIT, the company’s co-founder and CTO, Dr. Meng Huaiyu, participated as a core member in the development of the world’s first on-chip optical interconnect technology, the results of which were published in the journal Nature.
Public information shows that in 2018, Xizhi Technology secured $10.7 million in seed funding, with participants including Baidu Ventures and ZhenFund.
In April 2020, Xizhi Technology announced the completion of a $26 million Series A financing round, led by Matrix Partners China and China Renaissance’s CR Silicon Valley Fund, with participation from Vertex Ventures, CAS Star, China Merchants Capital, and others. Existing shareholder Baidu Ventures continued to add investment.
In July 2020, Xizhi Technology completed a tens of millions of dollars Series A+ financing round, with investment from H&L Capital.
The company’s Series B financing details were not publicly disclosed. However, according to an article published on the Zhangjiang Science City website in February 2024, the Shanghai Science and Innovation Fund, initiated by Shanghai International Group, led the Series B financing for Xizhi Technology. Subsequently, Tencent Investment, Sequoia Capital, and P7 (Saudi Aramco) also completed follow-on investments in Xizhi Technology, more than doubling the company’s valuation.
Multiple Thousand-Card Clusters Delivered
Shortly before announcing the completion of the latest 1.5 billion yuan Series C financing round, Xizhi Technology disclosed multiple technological breakthroughs and commercialization progress in key areas such as super-node construction and CPO (co-packaged optics).
During the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held in July, Xizhi Technology launched the world’s first distributed optical interconnect optical switching GPU super-node—LightSphere X, which won the conference’s highest award, the “SAIL Award.” In collaboration with Biren Technology and ZTE, it demonstrated its first application and deployed a thousand-card super-node computing cluster at the Shanghai Electric Intelligent Computing Center.
LightSphere X aims to expand Scale-Up networks by innovatively introducing advanced optical interconnect technology, breaking through the physical limitations of traditional interconnect methods within cabinets. It can construct large-scale computing clusters with high bandwidth and low latency, significantly improving GPU utilization.
At the 2025 WAIC, Xizhi Technology also released its latest progress in advanced optics, collaborating with Iluvatar Corex to launch the domestic first xPU-CPO photoelectric co-packaged prototype system, marking the first domestic case of using CPO technology to achieve direct light emission from GPUs.
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