Arago, a France- and US-based deep-tech start-up, has raised $26 million in an oversubscribed seed round to commercialise a photonic processor that it says delivers GPU-class performance while cutting AI energy use by at least a factor of ten. The chip, codenamed “JEF”, processes data with photons rather than electrons, generating far less heat and allowing denser computing without additional cooling or power upgrades. The financing was co-led by Earlybird, Protagonist and Visionaries Tomorrow, with participation from C4 Ventures and prominent angel investors including former executives at Apple, Nvidia and Hugging Face. The round converts to roughly €22 million. Founded last year by photonics and machine-learning researchers Nicolas Muller, Eliott Sarrey and Ambroise Müller, Arago employs about 20 engineers across France, North America and Israel. The company plans to use the fresh capital to expand hiring and ready its first commercial samples, positioning the light-based chip as a drop-in option for existing AI software frameworks and data-centre infrastructure.