Startups Bring Optical Metamaterials to AI Data Centers

Light-warping physics made “invisibility cloaks” a possibility. Now two startups hope to harness the science underlying this advance to boost the bandwidth of data centers and speed artificial intelligence. Roughly 20 years ago, scientists developed the first structures capable of curving light around objects to conceal them. These are composed of optical metamaterials —materials with structures smaller than the wavelengths they are designed to manipulate, letting them bend light in unexpected ways. The problem with optical cloaks? “There’s no market for them,” says Patrick Bowen, cofounder and CEO of photonic computing startup Neurophos in Austin, Texas. For instance, each optical cloak typically works only on a single color of light instead of on all visible colors as you might want for stealth applications. Now companies are devising more practical uses for the science behind cloaks, such as improving the switches that connect computers in data centers for AI and other…