Silicon Valley-based Ayar Labs develops broadband conductors.

Lockheed Ventures, the venture investment unit of defense conglomerate Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), invested an undisclosed amount into Ayar Labs. (Technical.ly)

Charles Wuischpard, CEO, Ayar Labs, said that the startup valued Lockheed’s funding as part of an important long-term working relationship.

Ayar will use the funds to accelerate the commercialization of its patented solutions. These are for applications in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and digital beam-forming radar applications.

Intel partnership

Last November, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) selected Ayar as its optical I/O solution partner for their recently awarded DARPA PIPES research project. In its first phase, the project will use Ayar’s TeraPHY™ chiplet co-packaged with an Intel FPGA.

“We’re seeing an explosion of Datacenter workloads that have an insatiable demand for bandwidth and the need to connect devices at rack-scale distances,” said Vince Hu, VP of Strategy and Innovation for Intel’s FPGA products, at the time. “The best way to do that is with optical interconnect and by using an Ayar Labs chiplet(s), we can achieve very high bandwidth at low latency and low power consumption.”

“Bringing optical connectivity all the way into the CPU/SOC package has long been one of the ‘Holy Grail’ projects in High Performance and Hyperscale Computing,” said Wuischpard.

Strategic investments

“Our investment strategy is to find commercially driven, dual-use technologies that align with Lockheed Martin current and future strategic interests like autonomy, artificial intelligence/machine learning, high-performance computing, space technologies, among others,” Chris Moran, executive director, and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures, told Technical.ly, referring to the current funding.

Last month, Lockheed Ventures also participated in Arlington-based startup DeepSig’s $5 million Series A round. DeepSig uses AI and ML to detect wireless signals faster than traditional techniques to help thwart intrusions. It will use the funding to develop new AI-powered software to replace antiquated wireless communications software to achieve lower power consumption and better security.

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Image Source: Lockheed Martin @ Flickr