Monolithically integrated, optically pumped, programmable multi-color laser built on Tower’sPH18 platform enables scalable CWDM/DWDM optical fabrics for disaggregated AI clusters

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MIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel and SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Aug. 25, 2025 - Tower Semiconductor (NASDAQ/TASE: TSEM), a leading foundry of high-value analog semiconductor solutions, and Xscape Photonics, a U.S.-based innovator in advanced photonic interconnects funded by industry leaders such as NVIDIA and Cisco, today announced the successful prototyping and validation kit availability of the industry’s first on-chip, optically pumped, multi-wavelength laser source. Built on Tower’s mature, high-volume PH18 Silicon Photonics platform, the solution supports CWDM and DWDM wavelength grids and is tailored for AI datacenter fabrics, where bandwidth density, power efficiency, and scalability are essential.

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The optical interconnect market for AI datacenters is expected to grow, driven by the rising demand for high-speed, low-latency connectivity in hyperscale AI deployments. According to LightCounting, sales of optical transceivers and LPO/CPO for AI clusters are expected to reach more than $10 billion in 2026, double the size of sales in 2024. LightCounting projects these sales to reach $20 billion by 2030.

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This breakthrough from Tower Semiconductor and Xscape Photonics enables a path toward high performance, high reliability, lower cost and a simplified supply chain by monolithically embedding programmable multi-color lasers on-chip, pumped optically by a single CW external laser. It also eliminates the need to source for multiple externally modulated lasers or require hybrid III-V integration. Xscape Photonics’ solution simplifies design, reduces latency and component count, and is especially impactful for GPU-to-GPU and GPU-to-HBM optical links in AI clusters. Leveraging Tower’s high-volume modular PH18 platform, the solution offers a seamless upgrade path for existing customers, fully compatible with established photonic components such as modulators and detectors.

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“Our close collaboration with Tower has allowed us to bring to market a highly differentiated, manufacturable, and scalable solution,” said Vivek Raghunathan, CEO of Xscape Photonics. “By building on Tower’s proven and qualified high-volume PH18 platform, we’ve eliminated the need for costly hybrid laser integration and delivered the first monolithically integrated, multi-color laser source directly on-chip. This will transform how AI fabrics are architected going forward.”

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Xscape Photonics is developing a multi-color laser platform, ChromX, based on its proprietary CombX technology, a programmable laser source device that allows end users—especially those already designing with Tower’s PH18 platform—to easily integrate high-performance laser sources, significantly reducing packaging complexity and component count. The laser source is compatible with existing silicon photonic modulators and detectors, opening a seamless path toward fully integrated optical interconnect for AI data center fabrics.

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“We are excited to partner with Xscape Photonics in bringing this first-of-its-kind innovation to life,” said Ed Preisler, Vice President and GM of Tower Semiconductor’s RF Business Unit. “Tower’s multi-sourced and high-volume silicon photonics platform has once again demonstrated its ability to support advanced custom solutions for AI and datacenter customers at scale. This new solution exemplifies how our flexible, modular technology ecosystem enables rapid prototyping and high-volume production adoption for emerging AI and data-driven markets.”

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For additional information about the company’s RF platform offering, visit here.

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_{About Tower Semiconductor}

_{Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ/TASE: TSEM), the leading foundry of high-value analog semiconductor solutions, provides technology, development, and process platforms for its customers in growing markets such as consumer, industrial, automotive, mobile, infrastructure, medical and aerospace and defense. Tower Semiconductor focuses on creating a positive and sustainable impact on the world through long-term partnerships and its advanced and innovative analog technology offering, comprised of a broad range of customizable process platforms such as SiGe, BiCMOS, mixed-signal/CMOS, RF CMOS, CMOS image sensor, non-imaging sensors, displays, integrated power management (BCD and 700V), photonics, and MEMS. Tower Semiconductor also provides world-class design enablement for a quick and accurate design cycle as well as process transfer services including development, transfer, and optimization, to IDMs and fabless companies. To provide multi-fab sourcing and extended capacity for its customers, Tower Semiconductor owns one operating facility in Israel (200mm), two in the U.S. (200mm), two in Japan (200mm and 300mm) which it owns through its 51% holdings in TPSCo, shares a 300mm facility in Agrate, Italy with STMicroelectronics as well as has access to a 300mm capacity corridor in Intel’s New Mexico factory. For more information, please visit: www.towersemi.com.}

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_{Safe Harbor Regarding Forward-Looking Statements}

_{This press release includes forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may vary from those projected or implied by such forward-looking statements. A complete discussion of risks and uncertainties that may affect the accuracy of forward-looking statements included in this press release or which may otherwise affect Tower’s business is included under the heading “Risk Factors” in Tower’s most recent filings on Forms 20-F, F-3, F-4 and 6-K, as were filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and the Israel Securities Authority. Tower does not intend to update, and expressly disclaim any obligation to update, the information contained in this release.}

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_{About Xscape Photonics}

_{Xscape Photonics develops custom photonic platform solutions designed for ultra-high bandwidth connections inside data centers to power Agentic AI systems. The company's proprietary ChromX platform targets scaling of AI computing performance in an environmentally sustainable manner and is optimized for power, cost, scale and reliability. The company recently announced the availability of EagleX, its technology evaluation kit.  To learn more, follow us on LinkedIn or visit xscapephotonics.com.}

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_{Tower Semiconductor Company Contact:  Orit Shahar | +972-74-7377440 | oritsha@towersemi.com}

_{Tower Semiconductor Investor Relations Contact: Liat Avraham |+972-4-6506154 | liatavra@towersemi.com}

Vikram brings over two decades of deep technical and product leadership in photonics. A key member of the core team that successfully commercialized silicon photonics at Intel Corporation, he played a pivotal role in bringing breakthrough optical technologies from lab to market. Prior to that, he was an early member of the technical team at Luxtera, Inc., where he drove pioneering efforts in silicon photonics.

Vikram holds a Ph.D. from University of Southern California and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Tim Jenks joins Xscape Photonics Inc as Business Execution Advisor

We are thrilled to announce that Tim Jenks has joined our team as a Business Execution Advisor. Tim brings a wealth of experience and expertise in building successful global teams while driving for execution excellence.

Tim Jenks is the former Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics, a leading global supplier of lasers and optoelectronic products to transmit high-speed digital optical signals in Cloud and hyperscale data center and telecom networks. NeoPhotonics was the largest provider of semiconductor tunable lasers in the industry. Tim led NeoPhotonics for more than 20 years, from venture-funded start-up to public company. The company merged with Lumentum in 2022.

Tim previously served in positions of increasing responsibility at Raychem Corporation, a materials engineering company which was acquired by Tyco International Ltd. (now TE Connectivity Ltd.) in 1998.

He is a former nuclear-power trained naval officer, having served on multiple nuclear surface ships, and holds a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, a Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Marine Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy.

See post on LinkedIn!

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Xscape Photonics Inc. has appointed Karthik Vaithianathan as its Head of AI Systems Architecture to drive system solutions based on its ChromX platform. Karthik brings over 25 years of experience in IC design, HW-SW co-design, CPU & ASIC architectures, distributed computing, and deep neural networks (DNNs) to the company. His proven success in AI/ML includes building and shipping three vertically integrated AI Edge Computing products focusing on Vision/LLM during his tenure as the CTO of two startups he co-founded. Karthik’s career includes a decade as a lead architect for four SoC products at Intel Corporation.

Karthik holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University, Tempe, and earned his B.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai, India.

Looking forward to starting OFC Conference with the session including our Co-founder Yoshi O. alongside Mike Larson; Daisuke Inoue; John Johnson; Alexey Kovsh; Milind Gokhale; Richard Jones; Radek Roucka; Dr. Suresh Venkatesan; Alan Liu; Sylvie Menezo

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‍Thanks to organizers Milos Popovic, Haifeng Li, Wei Shi and Benjamin Lee.

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Learn about the work by: Lumentum; Sumitomo Electric; Broadcom; Alfalume, Inc; Casela Technologies; Intel Corporation; Ayar Labs; POET Technologies; Quintessent Inc.; SCINTIL Photonics; Xscape Photonics Inc.

It's been a remarkable week for Xscape Photonics Inc. Our co-founder Michal Lipson was recently inducted into the National Academy of Engineering for her groundbreaking work in silicon photonics. Additionally, our co-founder Keren Bergman was recognized by Optica with the prestigious C.E.K. Mees Medal for her pioneering research in optical interconnects and photonic architectures for high-performance computing.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Michal Lipson and Keren Bergman for their well-deserved accolades. It's truly inspiring to collaborate with such visionary leaders at Xscape Photonics Inc.hashtag

#silicon #Siliconphotonics #EngineeringExcellence #OpticalInnovation

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‍https://lnkd.in/gMzg3rZu

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Funding led by IAG Capital Partners with investment from Cisco Investments, NVIDIA and others to accelerate the development of Xscape Photonics’ fully programmable, multi-color photonics technology to solve energy, performance and scalability challenges in AI data centers

News Highlights:

• $44M in funding led by IAG Capital Partners with investment from Altair, Cisco Investments, Fathom Fund, Kyra Ventures, LifeX Ventures, NVIDIA and OUP.
• Xscape Photonics to address cost, power consumption, bandwidth and scalability challenges associated with AI through its revolutionary approach to solving the “escape bandwidth” problem that is common in today’s AI data centers.
• Funding to ramp up production of the ChromX platform, a fully programmable, multi-color photonics platform for AI data center fabrics that maximizes “escape bandwidth” out of GPUs by 10X, reduces power consumption by 10X compared to incumbent solutions and improves overall inference performance for AI workloads.

Xscape Photonics Co-founding team: Dr. Vivek Raghunathan, Prof. Alexander Gaeta, Prof. Michal Lipson, Prof. Keren Bergman and Dr. Yoshi Okawachi

Santa Clara, Calif. – October 15, 2024 – Xscape Photonics, a startup using silicon photonics to support the next generation of AI data centers, today announced the successful close of a $44 million Series A funding round, increasing the total amount raised to $57 million. The financing was led by IAG Capital Partners with investment from Altair, Cisco Investments, Fathom Fund, Kyra Ventures, LifeX Ventures, NVIDIA and OUP. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Xscape Photonics' ChromX platform, a scalable, multi-color, programmable photonics platform for AI data center fabrics.

“Historically, performance and scalability challenges have been addressed by building bigger data centers to train large language models. This approach is not sustainable and unlocks a myriad of additional issues around energy consumption and cost,” said Vivek Raghunathan, Co-Founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics. “At Xscape Photonics, we are on a mission to help our customers completely reimagine how they solve these challenges. This funding validates our mission and positions us for future growth to support next-generation AI data centers.”

According to a report by IDC, AI-driven workloads will account for over 20% of the energy consumption in large-scale data centers by 2025, especially as AI training becomes more common. With this growth occurring at such a rapid rate, AI data centers struggle to meet the energy efficiency, performance and scalability requirements needed to support the age of AI.

“The performance scaling challenges are centered on the fundamental problem of “escape bandwidth” that results in a key bottleneck for AI workloads,” said Keren Bergman, Co-Founder of Xscape Photonics.

"We see tremendous value in the technology that Xscape Photonics is developing to solve challenges customers are facing with AI data center energy usage and bandwidth performance,” said Alex Kash, Associate at IAG Capital Partners. “The future of the data center will be built around photonics and this capital will help to dramatically accelerate Xscape Photonics’ product development.”

Data centers have traditionally been constrained to transmit data streams over four colors on a single fiber. However, as bandwidth demand has grown, the need for a scalable laser and photonics platform becomes essential as vendors are unable to keep up with the surge in volume demand for lasers in these networks. Xscape Photonics’ multi-wavelength photonics platform can handle hundreds of colors on a single fiber, providing flexibility and efficiency for AI workloads. With its ChromX platform, Xscape Photonics is enabling hyperscale customers to reimagine the data center fabric by utilizing a scalable solution that can hit volume, cost and density targets.

“We are excited about accelerating commercialization of our unique multi-color laser photonics technology, for different custom use cases in the AI and hyperscaler markets,” said Alexander Gaeta, Co-Founder and President of Xscape Photonics.

Xscape Photonics was started in 2022 by three Silicon Photonics pioneers, a laser expert from Columbia University and a founding member of the Silicon Photonics team at Broadcom. The team is comprised of PhDs and engineers with backgrounds in the semiconductor space from time at various organizations such as Broadcom, Cerebras, InPhi, Intel, Juniper, Lumentum, Marvell and Neophotonics.

To learn more about Xscape Photonics and ChromX, please visit: https://www.xscapephotonics.com/.

About Xscape Photonics

Xscape Photonics develops photonic platform solutions designed for ultra-high bandwidth connections inside data centers to power Gen AI systems. The company's proprietary platform targets scaling of AI computing performance in an environmentally sustainable manner and is optimized for power, cost, scale and reliability. To learn more, follow us on LinkedIn or visit xscapephotonics.com.

Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Funding led by IAG Capital Partners with investment from Cisco Investments, NVIDIA and others to accelerate the development of Xscape Photonics’ fully programmable, multi-color photonics technology to solve energy, performance and scalability challenges in AI data centers

News Highlights:

• $44M in funding led by IAG Capital Partners with investment from Altair, Cisco Investments, Fathom Fund, Kyra Ventures, LifeX Ventures, NVIDIA and OUP.
• Xscape Photonics to address cost, power consumption, bandwidth and scalability challenges associated with AI through its revolutionary approach to solving the “escape bandwidth” problem that is common in today’s AI data centers.
• Funding to ramp up production of the ChromX platform, a fully programmable, multi-color photonics platform for AI data center fabrics that maximizes “escape bandwidth” out of GPUs by 10X, reduces power consumption by 10X compared to incumbent solutions and improves overall inference performance for AI workloads.

Xscape Photonics Co-founding team: Dr. Vivek Raghunathan, Prof. Alexander Gaeta, Prof. Michal Lipson, Prof. Keren Bergman and Dr. Yoshi Okawachi

Santa Clara, Calif. – October 15, 2024 – Xscape Photonics, a startup using silicon photonics to support the next generation of AI data centers, today announced the successful close of a $44 million Series A funding round, increasing the total amount raised to $57 million. The financing was led by IAG Capital Partners with investment from Altair, Cisco Investments, Fathom Fund, Kyra Ventures, LifeX Ventures, NVIDIA and OUP. The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Xscape Photonics' ChromX platform, a scalable, multi-color, programmable photonics platform for AI data center fabrics.

“Historically, performance and scalability challenges have been addressed by building bigger data centers to train large language models. This approach is not sustainable and unlocks a myriad of additional issues around energy consumption and cost,” said Vivek Raghunathan, Co-Founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics. “At Xscape Photonics, we are on a mission to help our customers completely reimagine how they solve these challenges. This funding validates our mission and positions us for future growth to support next-generation AI data centers.”

According to a report by IDC, AI-driven workloads will account for over 20% of the energy consumption in large-scale data centers by 2025, especially as AI training becomes more common. With this growth occurring at such a rapid rate, AI data centers struggle to meet the energy efficiency, performance and scalability requirements needed to support the age of AI.

“The performance scaling challenges are centered on the fundamental problem of “escape bandwidth” that results in a key bottleneck for AI workloads,” said Keren Bergman, Co-Founder of Xscape Photonics.

"We see tremendous value in the technology that Xscape Photonics is developing to solve challenges customers are facing with AI data center energy usage and bandwidth performance,” said Alex Kash, Associate at IAG Capital Partners. “The future of the data center will be built around photonics and this capital will help to dramatically accelerate Xscape Photonics’ product development.”

Data centers have traditionally been constrained to transmit data streams over four colors on a single fiber. However, as bandwidth demand has grown, the need for a scalable laser and photonics platform becomes essential as vendors are unable to keep up with the surge in volume demand for lasers in these networks. Xscape Photonics’ multi-wavelength photonics platform can handle hundreds of colors on a single fiber, providing flexibility and efficiency for AI workloads. With its ChromX platform, Xscape Photonics is enabling hyperscale customers to reimagine the data center fabric by utilizing a scalable solution that can hit volume, cost and density targets.

“We are excited about accelerating commercialization of our unique multi-color laser photonics technology, for different custom use cases in the AI and hyperscaler markets,” said Alexander Gaeta, Co-Founder and President of Xscape Photonics.

Xscape Photonics was started in 2022 by three Silicon Photonics pioneers, a laser expert from Columbia University and a founding member of the Silicon Photonics team at Broadcom. The team is comprised of PhDs and engineers with backgrounds in the semiconductor space from time at various organizations such as Broadcom, Cerebras, InPhi, Intel, Juniper, Lumentum, Marvell and Neophotonics.

To learn more about Xscape Photonics and ChromX, please visit: https://www.xscapephotonics.com/.

About Xscape Photonics

Xscape Photonics develops photonic platform solutions designed for ultra-high bandwidth connections inside data centers to power Gen AI systems. The company's proprietary platform targets scaling of AI computing performance in an environmentally sustainable manner and is optimized for power, cost, scale and reliability. To learn more, follow us on LinkedIn or visit xscapephotonics.com.

Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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Media contacts:

Denery Noone for Xscape Photonics

Wireside Communications

Email: dnoone@wireside.com

Phone: +1-508-838-6553

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Xscape Photonics develops photonic platform solutions designed for ultra-high bandwidth connections inside data centers to power Gen AI systems. The company's proprietary platform targets scaling of AI computing performance in an environmentally sustainable manner and is optimized for power, cost, scale and reliability.

“I am excited to welcome Nicolas Herriau as Vice President of Strategy & Product Management ” said Vivek Raghunathan , co-Founder and CEO of Xscape Photonics. “Nicolas brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in the field of photonics and datacenter markets as well as a proven history in bringing technology products to market and driving commercial growth. Nicolas joins us at this pivotal time as Xscape focuses on expanding its global commercial footprint and market leadership”

Nicolas has over 25 years of experience in the photonics space. He joins Xscape from Lumentum where he was the General Manager of its Datacom business unit after serving as the Vice President of Strategy. In prior roles, Nicolas held various executive positions in Product engineering and General Manager serving the Hyperscale Cloud Datacenters.

View the article on LinzkedIn.

New member announcement!

We are excited to welcome Xscape Photonics Inc to the MSA. Xscape develops photonic platform solutions designed for ultra-high bandwidth connections inside datacenters to power Gen AI systems.

View article here

At IEEE’s 74th Electronics and Components Technology Conference (ECTC), Keren Bergman gave a keynote address about different techniques and approaches to bring photonic chips closer to the electrical side, compute and memory, and other components at the edge of the computing system—and we got a chance to chat with her.

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TROY, Mich., Dec. 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair (Nasdaq: ALTR) a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI), has invested $10 million in Xscape Photonics, a start-up that developed patented technology for photonic chips for ultrahigh-bandwidth connections inside data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) systems.By applying innovative photonics technology, Xscape Photonics has developed a platform that connects various computing elements in an environmentally sustainable way while offering the highest possible performance. Image provided by Xscape PhotonicsUntil now, computing leveraged a traditional electronic approach to moving vast amounts of data from chip to chip which requires significant space and power and produces substantial heat leading to performance challenges as HPC applications scale exponentially, especially in data science and AI. By applying innovative photonics technology, Xscape has developed a platform that connects various computing elements in an environmentally sustainable way while offering the highest possible performance. This novel approach uses photonics to drastically reduce power consumption and heat production while increasing the speed and power of communications, all to support the vast increase in the amount of data transferred from chip to chip, node to node, and more."This investment and collaboration with some of the world's best innovators in photonics will allow us to stay at the cutting edge of such high-fidelity and advanced technologies that will help our customers solve their problems more efficiently as they look to the next generation of hardware," said James R. Scapa, founder and chief executive officer, Altair. "Aligned with Altair's history in embracing high-performance computing and tying our software innovation to the advancements in HPC hardware, understanding how our software can integrate with such technologies in the future will allow us to continue to push the boundaries of technology and help our customers accelerate their pace of innovation."The potential for photonics is significant as high-speed data transfer is also relevant for software that facilitates simulation, HPC, AI, and machine learning. In the future, more simulation and compute power will be needed to allow for greater analysis, more sustainable productivity, lowered costs, better products, and faster time-to-market. Shifting to embrace photonics will allow organizations across all sectors – including hardware, software, and product development companies – to accelerate their pace of innovation.Xscape Photonics is led by Columbia University professors and world leading researchers in photonics, including:

• Alexander Gaeta – chief executive officer and co-founder; David M. Rickey Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University and world leader in nonlinear photonics
• Keren Bergman – co-founder; professor at Columbia University, and world leader in photonic architectures for computing
• Michal Lipson – co-founder; professor at Columbia University, world leader in silicon photonics, and MacArthur Fellow
• Vivek Raghunathan – co-founder; senior principal engineer, Product Architecture, Silicon Photonics Founding Team at Broadcom; led Intel's First SiPh Product Ramp
• Yoshi Okawachi – co-founder; research scientist at Columbia University and a world leader in photonic frequency-comb technology

"We are proud to reinvent the future of computing by developing the most energy-efficient, high-bandwidth, and high-performance photonics technology that can scale in a sustainable way while meeting the demands of the future," said Gaeta. "The investment and relationship with Altair will allow us to push the boundaries of our platform and integrate it with the world's best simulation, HPC, and AI software to help customers in all industries take their innovations to new heights."As part of the investment, Scapa will assume a seat on Xscape Photonics' board of directors and Altair will also secure a seat on the board of observers.For more information on Xscape Photonics, visit https://www.xscapephotonics.com/.About AltairAltair is a global leader in computational science and artificial intelligence (AI) that provides software and cloud solutions in simulation, high-performance computing (HPC), data analytics, and AI. Altair enables organizations across all industries to compete more effectively and drive smarter decisions in an increasingly connected world – all while creating a greener, more sustainable future. For more information, visit https://www.altair.com/.

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We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dipesh Patel to the Board of Directors. Dipesh is a semiconductor executive with over 25 years of experience and spent the majority of his career at Arm, the leading semiconductor IP company. He now runs a consulting practice that provides advice on strategy, go-to-market, and running engineering programs. He is also an Operating Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital, and holds non-executive director positions with OxfordIonics and Optalysys where is also the Chair of the board. During his time at Arm, he held a number of general and technical management roles with responsibility for products and businesses covering the technology stack: from transistor technology, IP, chip design, embedded software and cloud platforms.  Dipesh was a member of the Executive Committee at Arm since 2013 and his most recent role was as CTO and led the Research and Digital IT functions. Prior to this, Dipesh was the President of the IoT Services Group and led the creation of a new software and services business to capture the market opportunities in the Internet of Things.

Xscape Photonics develops custom photonic solutions leveraging CMOS semiconductor ecosystem to solve the performance bottlenecks of Agentic AI systems and recently announced the sampling of EagleX, its technology validation kit