Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli first teamed up at SpaceX, where they worked on creating optical communication links essential for maintaining continuous connectivity among thousands of Starlink internet satellites.
These three engineers are now the co-founders of Mesh Optical Technologies, a Los Angeles-based startup that revealed on Tuesday it secured $50 million in Series A funding, with Thrive Capital at the helm.
Mesh’s objective is to mass-produce optical transceivers—devices that transform optical signals from fiber or lasers into electrical signals for computing systems. CEO Brashears, President Ramos, and VP of Product Grown-Haeberli identified this market gap and opportunity while working on a new generation of data-intensive SpaceX satellites, which necessitated evaluating the existing optical transceiver market and highlighted its deficiencies.
These transceivers are crucial for data centers dedicated to training and deploying extensive deep learning models, as they enable numerous GPUs to function collaboratively. For instance, AOI, a prominent U.S. supplier, secured a $4 billion contract last year to supply components for AWS data centers.
As Brashears clarified, “If someone boasts about a million GPU cluster, you need to multiply that number by four or five to get the total transceivers within that cluster.”
Mesh’s ambition is to produce a thousand units daily within the current year, aiming to qualify for large-scale orders by 2027 and 2028.
With Chinese companies largely dominating the optical transceiver market, Mesh believes there’s a strategic benefit in establishing its supply chain independently of China. Although trade limitations haven’t yet affected this market, the company’s founders and investors view their initiative as proactively addressing a potential national security concern.
Thrive Partner Philip Clark conveyed to TechCrunch, “We believe AI is the most pivotal technology in many generations, and relying on misaligned or competitive nations for essential AI data center capital expenditures presents a significant issue.” He added, “Currently, Mesh is addressing the critical demand for superior interconnectivity necessary for continued AI expansion.”
According to the founders, Mesh’s primary hurdle lies in implementing fully automated manufacturing methods, which are not widely adopted within U.S. manufacturing. The vast majority of this specialized knowledge resides in China, to the extent that some European equipment manufacturers even anticipate Chinese clients; for instance, a German company’s typical registration form requests a Chinese business identification number.
The founders anticipate that integrating design and production will lead to the creation of more efficient and cost-effective components. Ramos noted that their present design eliminates a frequently used yet power-intensive component, potentially decreasing GPU cluster power consumption by 3% to 5%—a significant saving given hyperscalers’ constant drive for maximum system efficiency.
While data centers represent Mesh’s initial focus, the company envisions optical wavelength communications as the forthcoming standard in communication technology.
Brashears informed TechCrunch, “For a considerable period, the world’s attention has largely been on radio frequencies.” He continued, “Our aim is to be at the forefront of the shift from RF to photonics; we intend to interconnect everything, not solely computers, though that is our starting point.”