Founder @RoadsterCapital American Industrial Base 🇺🇸 Automation, Security, Sustainability. 506(c)

West Coast meets East Coast
Joined March 2011
In which PsiQuantum is positioning itself as a potential components supplier for SI buildout?
AI is pushing computing infrastructure to its limits. Our photonics can help. Today, PsiQuantum is unveiling its industry-leading Optical Circuit Switch initiative with an 8×8 OCS demo built on the company’s low-loss silicon photonics platform—the same platform we’ve spent nearly a decade developing for quantum computing.
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Ryan Else retweeted
Replying to @letonyo
It's a strategic diversification. The silicon photonics platform they built for quantum has unexpected AI applications. We actually broke down the details here: xitter.cf/AGTPinsights/status/21…
PsiQuantum just unveiled an Optical Circuit Switch initiative for AI data centers. Here's what you need to know. The company announced it on X on Oct 28, 2026. It showed an 8×8 OCS demo built on its low-loss silicon photonics platform. That is the same platform it has spent nearly a decade developing for quantum computing. An optical circuit switch changes connections between fibers without converting light to electricity. That can remove equipment and power from AI clusters. PsiQuantum's pitch is that AI is pushing computing infrastructure to its limits and its photonics can help. The company was founded on the premise that useful quantum computing needs a million-qubit, fault-tolerant system. It chose photonics for its scaling advantages. Now it is positioning itself as a possible components supplier for AI buildout. Here is how the specs are being read. Observers note the switch has about 1.2 dB of insertion loss and needs no amplifier. That puts it on par with a MEMS switch, which typically runs about 1.5 dB. Other silicon photonics switches from Salience and iPronics lose several dB on the chip alone. On speed, PsiQuantum trails. Switching takes about 3 ms, and critics say that is too slow to use in practice without redesigning the whole link. Another critic says crosstalk of 40 dB is weak for an 8×8 switch. The market sees a pivot. Some call it another entrant in optical switching, a race that includes Lumentum. Others ask whether PsiQuantum is shifting away from quantum. Reports say it is backed by the DoW, DoC and Nvidia's venture arm. Key numbers: - 8×8 ports in the demo - About 1.2 dB insertion loss, no amplifier needed - About 3 ms switching time - About 40 dB crosstalk - Nearly 10 years building the photonics platform - 1 million qubits, the company's fault-tolerant target The demo is a first step. It shows PsiQuantum's quantum photonics platform can also be used in AI networking.
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Ryan Else retweeted
AI is pushing computing infrastructure to its limits. Our photonics can help. Today, PsiQuantum is unveiling its industry-leading Optical Circuit Switch initiative with an 8×8 OCS demo built on the company’s low-loss silicon photonics platform—the same platform we’ve spent nearly a decade developing for quantum computing.
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Ryan Else retweeted
I think our industry partners rather doubted we would get anywhere near these numbers but PsiQuantum team made this look easy. This chip enables all-optical switching of network traffic without pluggable transceivers, moving mirrors, or amplifiers to compensate for loss. Google are still the only company brave enough to do OCS at any meaningful scale — huge credit to them for slamming free-space optics (!) in a datacenter rack. This photonic chip achieves similar power, throughput, and architectural advantages without moving parts, and in a much smaller package. 64-port strictly non-blocking silicon will go into test this year, 72-port device tapes out soon. All of these chips will run well under 3dB loss thanks to ludicrously good passives (<1mdB splitters and crossings, 1dB/m waveguides) and advanced edge coupling (~5X better than industry). No need to put an amplifier on every fiber. All of this is done using simple millisecond-rate thermal phase shifters, but lurking in the background is the prospect of fast switching with barium titanate — PsiQuantum already builds BTO switches that switch up to 64 ports in a nanosecond, and — somewhat in contrast with TFLN – we can fit a ton of switches on a reticle. This goes far beyond current industry demand but will unlock categorically new architectures for training and inference. We’re excited to make our first serious foray into classical computing hardware and believe this product will make the architectural benefits of optical circuit switching simpler and more accessible to the industry. We also would not be doing this if it were not extremely well-aligned with PsiQuantum’s mission. The OCS chip is strikingly similar to parts that we already make for pump laser distribution in the photonic quantum computer — so similar in fact that it only took a dozen engineers a couple weeks to design the part. We did not modify the photonics process, PDK, or packaging flow to achieve these results. Now, through the process of building hundreds of thousands of these chips for industry, we’re also going to improve the yield, reliability, and supply chain for parts that we need for utility-scale photonic quantum computing. This is a direct realization of the founding thesis of PsiQuantum — that by aligning ourselves with the prevailing wind of the conventional computing industry, fabs, OSATs, CMs etc, we can de-risk and accelerate the hard journey to a useful fault-tolerant quantum computer.
AI is pushing computing infrastructure to its limits. Our photonics can help. Today, PsiQuantum is unveiling its industry-leading Optical Circuit Switch initiative with an 8×8 OCS demo built on the company’s low-loss silicon photonics platform—the same platform we’ve spent nearly a decade developing for quantum computing.
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9/ The credential means nothing. What we’re betting on is the proximity to greatness, and the audacity to chase it a second time.
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10/ If you were an early or long-tenured builder at a company that bent the arc of an industry, and you’re thinking about what’s next: Reach out, tell me more at roadstercapital.com I want to meet you first. @RoadsterCapital backs the alumni of empires.
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The most dangerous founding teams come from two mafias at once. Anduril fused Oculus’s consumer hardware instincts with Palantir’s defense playbook. That’s the kind of team we want to fund. @RoadsterCapital
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Ryan Else retweeted
but we still don't have flying ca....
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O A.I., A.I., wherefore art thou S.I.? Deny thy "Artificial" and refuse thy "A"… @elonmusk
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What's in a name? That which we call Artificial Intelligence / By any other name would work as well.
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A Robot SPAC is not a sign of strength or Wall Street growth metrics IMO
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Today, we raced the base. Until next time. @NASCAR @TeamHendrick
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You have to love that sound
Starship Flight 12 goals: • Debut next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles • First launch from Starbase’s newly redesigned launch pad • Demonstrate upgraded Raptor engines in flight • Deploy 20 Starlink simulators and 2 modified Starlink satellites • Test in-space Raptor relight • Evaluate heat shield performance and tile damage scenarios during reentry • Perform experimental reentry and maneuvering tests • Offshore splashdown attempt for the redesigned Super Heavy booster
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