CARLSBAD: Polaris Electro-Optics Inc. announced $50 million in Series B financing to bring its FenGlass electro-optic modulator platform to production, the company said Tuesday.

Walden Catalyst Ventures led the round, with participation from new investors Socratic Partners, Cambium Capital, Knollwood and Hudson River Trading, along with existing investors Koch Disruptive Technologies, M Ventures, Rhapsody Venture Partners, Buff Gold Ventures and Blue Sky Capital. Andy Kau, a partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, will join the Polaris board of directors.

The company said the funding will support portfolio expansion, volume scale-up, product tapeouts, qualification and engineering hiring at its two sites. Polaris aims to launch its first product in 2027.

Addressing an AI Infrastructure Bottleneck

As AI workloads grow exponentially in what the company calls the agentic era, data movement has become a critical bottleneck in AI infrastructure. Networks face severe bandwidth constraints, and energy consumption per bit is unsustainable, Polaris said. Hyperscalers, neoclouds and infrastructure providers are working to scale both the data rate per lane and the number of lanes, with the next node requiring 400 gigabits per second per lane and beyond.

Polaris says its FenGlass platform removes the trade-off between manufacturability, reliability and bandwidth that affects other next-generation modulator technologies. The platform uses a proprietary ferroelectric nematic glass that exhibits a strong Pockels effect and is integrated directly onto finished silicon photonic wafers after they leave the foundry, using standard processes and no poling.

The result, according to the company, is modulators that reach 400 Gbps per lane with sub-volt drive voltages in a compact footprint with excellent linearity, all built inside the silicon photonics platform the industry has already qualified.

“The industry doesn’t have a speed problem or a manufacturing problem, it has both at the same time, and every existing platform solves only one,” said Morten Nissov, CEO of Polaris Electro-Optics. “Our FenGlass platform enables 400G per lane and beyond while staying inside a standard CMOS silicon photonics flow. Our customers don’t have to bet on a new fab, a new substrate or a new supply chain to get to their next node. Today’s financing round funds the move from a proven device to large scale commercial deployment.”

Verified Performance and Reliability

Polaris said it has demonstrated and independently verified 400 Gbps per lane modulation with FenGlass, completed Telcordia reliability tests, and validated compatibility with standard solder reflow — all critical requirements for next-generation optical interconnect applications relying on flip-chip, 2.5D and 3D packaging.

Because FenGlass is an engineered material, its electro-optic response can be tuned across product generations, from 200G per lane to 400G and toward 800G, the company said. The platform builds on materials that have been commercially deployed for more than five decades and produced at a scale of tens of thousands of metric tons, bypassing common pitfalls of new technology introduction, according to Polaris.

“New electro-optic materials have been failing the same test for decades: they work in the lab but fail in the fab,” Kau said. “What convinced us about Polaris is that FenGlass goes onto a finished silicon photonics wafer using processes a contract manufacturer already runs. Performance and reliability are table stakes. The ease of integration and the path to scale are why we led this round.”

Partnerships and Market Plans

Polaris is partnering with optical module makers, hyperscalers and major cloud infrastructure providers to enable solutions across pluggable modules, near-packaged optics, co-packaged optics and coherent scale-across architectures.

Founded in 2021 as a spinout of the University of Colorado Boulder, Polaris develops its materials in Boulder, Colorado, and its photonic solutions in Carlsbad, California, where it is headquartered.

The company will exhibit at ECOC 2026 in Málaga, Spain, from Sept. 21–23 at booth 1465.

About Polaris Electro-Optics

Polaris Electro-Optics develops high-speed electro-optic modulator technology for AI, datacom and telecom infrastructure. Its FenGlass platform integrates a proprietary ferroelectric nematic glass material into standard silicon photonic integrated circuits, delivering 400 Gbps per lane and beyond at sub-volt drive voltages with CMOS-compatible, scalable manufacturing.

About Walden Catalyst Ventures

Walden Catalyst Ventures is a global venture capital firm focused on deep-tech innovation. With offices in Silicon Valley, Europe and Israel, the firm partners with founders developing breakthrough technologies. Its team invests across semiconductors, AI infrastructure, advanced computing and other foundational technologies.