SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 17 (Reuters) - Celero Communications,

a U.S. startup founded by networking industry veterans, on

Monday said it has raised $140 million to build a chip that will

help link artificial intelligence data centers across vast

distances.

The Irvine, California-based firm is designing a chip that will

translate the bursts of light sent over fiber-optic cables

between data centers into the electrical ones and zeros used in

computing networks inside the data centers. Long-distance

connections between data centers have become an area of renewed

investment in the chip industry as firms such as Alphabet's

Google and Meta Platforms ( META ) seek to build massive data

center campuses near available power sources.

Celero founders Nariman Yousefi and Oscar Agazzi were

formerly senior executives at Marvell Technology ( MRVL ), one of the

major suppliers of chips that connect data centers. Celero plans

to use new algorithms that will be embedded in its chips to

process light sent over existing fiber-optic cables in the

ground faster and using less power.

"Every time the customer sends a pulse of light, you want to

send more information," Yousefi told Reuters in an interview.

"That's how you get the efficiency over the fiber optics."

The funding announced on Monday includes a $100 million

Series B round led by CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth

fund, and a previously undisclosed earlier $40 million round led

by Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from Valor Equity

Partners, Atreides Management, Maverick Silicon and others.

James Luo, a general partner at CapitalG and now a member of

the Celero board of directors, said the investment was

attractive because existing chips for linking data centers on a

campus have trouble stretching hundreds of miles, while

telecommunications chips that can reach that far remain too

expensive and power-hungry for wide use in AI, where networking

chips compete for dollars and power with the rest of the chips

in the systems.

"You're kind of stuck now with a very big gap in the

middle," Luo told Reuters. "It's clear there's a new class of

technology emerging."