SpaceX Veterans Raise $50M Series A to Power AI Data Centers with US-Made Optical Transceivers

Mesh Optical Technologies, founded by former SpaceX engineers, has secured a landmark $50 million Series A funding round.

The investment, led by Thrive Capital, positions the Los Angeles startup to mass-produce cutting-edge optical transceivers for data centers.

From Starlink to AI Infrastructure

CEO Travis Brashears, President Cameron Ramos, and VP of Product Serena Grown-Haeberli honed their expertise at SpaceX developing optical communications for thousands of Starlink satellites.

During work on compute-intensive next-gen satellites, they spotted limitations in the existing optical transceiver market dominated by Chinese suppliers.

Revolutionizing GPU Connectivity

Mesh Optical's transceivers convert fiber optic signals into electrical ones, enabling massive GPU clusters to collaborate on deep learning models.

By eliminating a power-hungry component, their design could slash GPU cluster energy use by 3% to 5%, addressing a critical bottleneck in AI scaling.

Brashears noted, “Someone will brag about a million GPU cluster; you have to multiply by four to five for the number of transceivers.”

Securing US Supply Chains

Thrive partner Philip Clark emphasized, “To have critical parts of AI data center capex run through misaligned countries is a problem,” highlighting national security implications.

Mesh plans lights-out automated manufacturing in the US, aiming for 1,000 units daily this year to qualify for bulk hyperscaler orders in 2027-2028.

This shift from RF to photonics marks a paradigm change, starting with data centers but eyeing broader interconnectivity.

With AI demand exploding, Mesh Optical Technologies is poised to fuel the next era of computing power while mitigating geopolitical risks.