Relativity Networks raises $22 million and secures $40 million hyperscaler contract

Relativity Networks raises $22 million and secures $40 million hyperscaler contract

Relativity Networks has raised $22 million through a SAFE investment, or simple agreement for future equity, and secured a $40 million contract with a hyperscaler. The company manufactures fiber cables, including hollow-core fiber (HCF), for customers seeking to meet the connectivity requirements of AI data centers.

Founded by Jason Eichenholz, the Orlando-based company said the SAFE round exceeded its target by more than two times. New investors included Rhapsody Venture Partners, Bell Ventures Inc., and Faster Than Glass LLC.

Relativity also announced a $40 million follow-on order from an unnamed leading hyperscaler. The customer recently tested Relativity's ChronoCore advanced optical networking technology by using it to connect two data centers.

"AI is no longer scaling inside a data center. It is scaling across geography," said Eichenholz, founder and CEO of Relativity Networks. "The next great AI infrastructure challenge is making thousands of distributed GPUs behave like one machine, even when the power they depend on is miles apart. ChronoCore is purpose-built for that world, giving hyperscalers the low-latency connectivity needed to scale AI wherever power is available."

The announcement follows a recent project with Italian optical cable manufacturer Prysmian. In July, the companies said they had produced their highest-density hollow-core fiber cable to date using Relativity Networks' ChronoCore fibers.

ChronoCore HCF is produced at Prysmian's facility in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and cabled at the company's plant in Claremont, North Carolina. Couplers, fiber characterization, and installation training are handled in Orlando, Florida.

Extending fiber range through the Prysmian partnership

Hollow-core fiber is designed with an air-filled central channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes, creating a structure similar to a honeycomb. Compared with conventional solid-core fiber, this design supports higher capacity and reduced chromatic dispersion, while allowing light to travel significantly faster.

Traditional fiber-optic cables have generally limited data centers to about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from power providers, or from one another, because of latency constraints. Relativity says HCF can extend that range to 90 kilometers (56 miles).

The technology's longer reach, lower latency, and higher bandwidth are intended to help hyperscalers address the growing connectivity requirements of AI workloads. Relativity's partnership with Prysmian is focused largely on producing cabling for AI data center operators.

As part of the joint project, the companies produced a 24-fiber cable contained in a single 10-millimeter cable, which Relativity described as its highest-density HCF cable to date. Testing with Dura-Line showed that the cable could be installed reliably in standard microducts, supporting its use in deployment environments.

The cable provides 24 low-latency pathways for connecting AI data centers over distances beyond the practical reach of conventional glass fiber. This could help hyperscalers connect facilities in locations with greater access to electrical power.

"Relativity Networks changes where AI infrastructure can be built," said Carsten Boers, managing partner at Rhapsody Venture Partners. "Power availability is the key constraint on data center placement. ChronoCore carries light roughly 47 percent faster than solid-core glass fibers, so distributed sites can sit that much farther apart within the same latency budget, more than doubling the area an operator can build in. It's deployed today, validated with partners like Prysmian, and the order book is well ahead of our expectations."