Eliyan raises $145M Series C to address AI data bottlenecks

A semiconductor startup focused on solving a critical data bottleneck in artificial intelligence data centers has raised $145 million in new funding, achieving a valuation of $1 billion. Eliyan Corporation, based in Santa Clara, California, announced the Series C financing on July 29, 2026, led by Seligman Ventures with participation from new strategic investors Cisco and Lumentum.

The funding underscores a growing challenge in AI infrastructure: while processors have become extraordinarily fast, the systems for moving data between them have not kept pace. This creates a bottleneck where expensive AI chips sit idle, waiting for data. Company executives estimate that only 30 to 40 percent of a typical graphics processing unit's capacity is utilized due to these data movement constraints.

Eliyan's technology aims to address this by providing high-speed interconnect solutions and optical chiplets that shuttle data between chips, across packages, and between server racks. Its products, including NuLink and NuGear, are designed to improve bandwidth and power efficiency, allowing data center operators to run their computing clusters closer to full capacity.