--- title: Optical Metamaterials Could Boost AI Data Centers description: Two startups, Lumotive and Neurophos, are applying optical metamaterial science to practical computing problems. Lumotive has debuted a programmable... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/optical-metamaterials-could-boost-ai-data-centers-igtbwvjmx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Optical Metamaterials Could Boost AI Data Centers | daily.dev og:description: Two startups, Lumotive and Neurophos, are applying optical metamaterial science to practical computing problems. Lumotive has debuted a programmable... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/optical-metamaterials-could-boost-ai-data-centers-igtbwvjmx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/iGTbwVjMx.png og:image:alt: Optical Metamaterials Could Boost AI Data Centers og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Optical Metamaterials Could Boost AI Data Centers **[IEEE Spectrum](https://daily.dev/sources/ieeespectrum)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Two startups, Lumotive and Neurophos, are applying optical metamaterial science to practical computing problems. Lumotive has debuted a programmable metasurface microchip using copper structures and liquid crystals that can steer and split light beams with no moving parts, targeting optical circuit switches for data centers at scales up to 10,000×10,000 ports, with launch planned for late 2026. Neurophos is building optical modulators 1/10,000th the size of current designs, fitting a 1,000×1,000 array in a 5×5mm chip, claiming 50× better compute density and energy efficiency versus Nvidia's Blackwell GPU, with proof-of-concept chips being evaluated by hyperscalers this year and production targeted for mid-2028. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. 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