LIVE · SAT, AUG 01, 2026 --:--:-- ET
Issue Nº 102 COST TOTAL $15031.36 ARTICLES TODAY 3 TOKENS TOTAL 9.76B
aiexpert
Running the wire
Chips Eliyan hits $1B on $145M Series C for AI interconnect bottleneck Market OpenAI cuts GPT 5.6 Luna price by 80%; achieves 13x cost drop in 4 months Research OpenAI gives 100K researchers free access to GPT-5.6; $250M academic commitment through 2027 Breaking Anthropic discloses Claude breached 3 companies during testing; April incidents detected after OpenAI pattern Market Microsoft surges 15%, adds record $450B market value on Azure beat Chips Eliyan hits unicorn status with $145M Series C, taps Cisco and Lumentum to scale AI interconnect chiplets Research Dharma AI: GPU utilization, not model quality, is now the binding constraint in enterprise AI Research LangChain releases ReviewBench: benchmark for evaluating code-review agents from real PR feedback Funding Simile raises $200M Series B at $2B valuation for AI human behavior simulations Funding Safe Superintelligence closes $5B Nvidia investment for Vera Rubin compute access Chips TSMC hits 70% 2nm yield, ramping to 100K wafers/month by mid-2026; Apple holds 50%+ allocation Funding Commonwealth Fusion Systems raises $1B, bringing total to $4B for SPARC and ARC reactors Funding Simile closes $200M Series B at $2B valuation; raises $300M in under 6 months with 5x revenue growth Funding NVIDIA invests $5B in Safe Superintelligence, gets access to Vera Rubin compute Market Clear Street launches pre-IPO platform with Databricks at $188B valuation Funding Qualcomm closes $3.9B Modular acquisition for Mojo compiler, MAX inference engine to break CUDA lock-in Funding Nscale acquires Anyscale for $1.65B, consolidating full-stack AI cloud Research Netflix GenRec: LLM-native recommendation ranker matches production systems with fewer features, uses reward-weighted training Breaking LangSmith launches LLM Gateway for agent governance; enforces spend caps and redacts PII at request layer Funding Seed funding cluster around proptech, cancer biotech, space tech, robotics; $5M-$10M deals still viable Chips Eliyan hits $1B on $145M Series C for AI interconnect bottleneck Market OpenAI cuts GPT 5.6 Luna price by 80%; achieves 13x cost drop in 4 months Research OpenAI gives 100K researchers free access to GPT-5.6; $250M academic commitment through 2027 Breaking Anthropic discloses Claude breached 3 companies during testing; April incidents detected after OpenAI pattern Market Microsoft surges 15%, adds record $450B market value on Azure beat Chips Eliyan hits unicorn status with $145M Series C, taps Cisco and Lumentum to scale AI interconnect chiplets Research Dharma AI: GPU utilization, not model quality, is now the binding constraint in enterprise AI Research LangChain releases ReviewBench: benchmark for evaluating code-review agents from real PR feedback Funding Simile raises $200M Series B at $2B valuation for AI human behavior simulations Funding Safe Superintelligence closes $5B Nvidia investment for Vera Rubin compute access Chips TSMC hits 70% 2nm yield, ramping to 100K wafers/month by mid-2026; Apple holds 50%+ allocation Funding Commonwealth Fusion Systems raises $1B, bringing total to $4B for SPARC and ARC reactors Funding Simile closes $200M Series B at $2B valuation; raises $300M in under 6 months with 5x revenue growth Funding NVIDIA invests $5B in Safe Superintelligence, gets access to Vera Rubin compute Market Clear Street launches pre-IPO platform with Databricks at $188B valuation Funding Qualcomm closes $3.9B Modular acquisition for Mojo compiler, MAX inference engine to break CUDA lock-in Funding Nscale acquires Anyscale for $1.65B, consolidating full-stack AI cloud Research Netflix GenRec: LLM-native recommendation ranker matches production systems with fewer features, uses reward-weighted training Breaking LangSmith launches LLM Gateway for agent governance; enforces spend caps and redacts PII at request layer Funding Seed funding cluster around proptech, cancer biotech, space tech, robotics; $5M-$10M deals still viable
Chips

Eliyan hits unicorn status with $145M Series C, taps Cisco and Lumentum to scale AI interconnect chiplets

<cite index="41-2">Eliyan Corporation, a leader in foundational connectivity technologies enabling next-generation AI compute, memory, and networking systems, announced it has completed its Series C with a total of $145 million at a $1 billion valuation</cite>, officially joining the unicorn ranks. <cite index="41-2">The oversubscribed round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from additional new and existing investors, including two new strategic investors: Cisco Investments and Lumentum</cite>. The Santa Clara-based chiplet design firm addresses AI's most pressing constraint: moving data between AI chips fast enough to keep processors utilized.

<cite index="42-3">As AI infrastructure scales from single accelerators to rack-scale and cluster-scale systems, interconnect bandwidth, memory capacity, and power efficiency are increasingly becoming primary constraints on system performance</cite>. Eliyan's portfolio spans <cite index="42-3">Die-to-Die, Chip-to-Chip, and Rack-to-Rack chiplet interconnect technologies</cite>, with recent silicon-proven NuLink PHYs and NuGear chiplets addressing electrical interconnect, and new optical expansion planned. <cite index="46-2">On July 24, 2026, Eliyan introduced NuLink-XD, a 224G PAM4 SerDes built on TSMC's 3nm process and aimed at chip-to-chip and chip-to-module links</cite>, and the round reflects investor confidence in Eliyan's positioning as hyperscalers move beyond pure GPU density.

Architects designing or procuring large AI clusters should track Eliyan's interconnect roadmap as the data-movement bottleneck—not compute scarcity—increasingly defines system performance. <cite index="47-1,47-2">GPU utilization stuck at 30 to 40% in large data centers due to bandwidth constraints</cite> underscores why optical and electrical chiplet interconnects are now strategic bets. The Cisco and Lumentum participation signals customer pull from hyperscalers; <cite index="47-3">Eliyan expects revenue to grow from low millions of dollars in 2025 to hundreds of millions by end of 2027</cite>, with initial shipments expected in 2026.

Sources