Israeli fiber-to-chip interconnect developer Teramount raised $50 million in a funding round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT).

The Jerusalem-based firm is developing optical solutions for data centers and communications networks, with its PhotonicPlug and PhotonicBump designed to support interconnects between photonic and traditional hardware.

KDT, the venture capital arm of Koch, joined a host of new investors backing the startup, including AMD Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, and Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Wistron, the manufacturing firm spun out of Acer, and early-stage investment firm Grove Ventures also backed Teramount, which plans to use the capital to grow its team and scale its co-packaged optics to volume production.

“This investment, which brings together strong financial and strategic investors, representing important parts of the optical connectivity ecosystem, is a testament to the potential of our technology in AI infrastructure and other high-performance applications,” Teramount CEO Hesham Taha noted in a statement.

Taha founded the firm alongside fellow physics expert Abraham Israel back in 2013. The pair are alumni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and with expertise in semiconductors and silicon photonics.

The startup was founded with a focus on creating hardware capable of enabling seamless fiber-to-chip integration, eliminating bottlenecks between optical fiber networks and electronic processing units without the need for costly conversions.

Teramount's optical fiber to silicon interconnect offerings include TeraVerse, a detachable connector designed to link optical fibers from outside a rack to the silicon photonics chips inside co-packaged optics (CPO) systems.