Egypt’s InfiniLink raises $10M seed round to build next-gen optical connectivity chips for AI data centres

Egypt-based InfiniLink has raised $10 million in a seed round to develop next-gen optical connectivity chips for AI data centres.

The round was led by MediaTek – the Taiwanese semiconductor giant ($70BN market-cap) – alongside Sukna Ventures, with participation from Egypt Ventures and angel investors from the US, Europe, and MENA.

• InfiniLink was co-founded in 2022 by Ahmed F. Aboul-Ella (CEO) and Botros George (CTO), seasoned chip engineers who previously worked with multinational firms and helped establish MediaTek Egypt.

🔧 The wedge

AI might be the future – but all that compute needs to talk to each other. Fast.

InfiniLink’s founding insight was this: as AI models scale, data centers are choking on their own complexity. Traditional copper and pluggable optics can’t move data fast enough between processors.

To fix this, they’re building ultra-efficient, silicon photonics-based optical chiplets – dubbed iOTC – to deliver higher bandwidth and lower energy use in data center interconnects.

🧠 Why it matters

AI workloads are exploding in size. Training and inference across clusters of GPUs and TPUs require communication that’s:

• Faster

• More power-efficient

• Scalable across rack-to-rack infrastructure

InfiniLink’s tech – based on co-packaged optics and chiplet architecture – sits at the heart of this future. Their integrated optical transceivers aim to leapfrog today’s power-hungry alternatives.

As AI data centres demand radical performance upgrades, InfiniLink is positioning itself as a key enabler of the next infrastructure wave.

🧬 What does the company do?

InfiniLink designs:

• iOTC optical chiplets for AI clusters and hyperscale data centers

• Co-packaged optical engines to replace legacy pluggables

• Low-power modules tailored for AI workloads

The company’s R&D is based in Cairo, drawing on Egypt’s deep pool of analog and photonics engineers. MediaTek has been a strategic partner since inception, offering technical and commercial support.

🔮 Outlook

The new funding will accelerate InfiniLink’s product roadmap, build out its engineering team, and bring its first commercial chiplets to market.

With MediaTek in its corner and demand for AI-ready data infrastructure surging, InfiniLink is well-positioned to become one of MENA’s first globally competitive semiconductor startups.

The InfiniLink deal offers a glimpse into a quiet renaissance underway in Egypt’s semiconductor industry. In 2023, Pearl Semiconductor raised $4.5 million in a round led by Sawari Ventures (Egypt) and Shorooq Partners (UAE), with participation from Qatar’s QBN Capital – another sign of rising regional conviction in the country’s deep-tech potential. To understand why this moment feels like a culmination, we need to look back at the long, winding journey from a handful of visionaries in the 1990s to today’s burgeoning ecosystem. More on that in an upcoming deep dive.