Neurophos Inc

Dr. Nathan Kundtz, CTO, Neurophos Inc

Dr. Kundtz, CTO of Neurophos and former CEO of Rendered.ai, is a physicist, engineer, entrepreneur, and investor. Awards include LinkedIn's top 10 tech pros under 40 and Goldman Sachs' 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs. Holds 40+ patents; former CEO of Kymeta.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topic:

Why the Time for Optical Compute has Arrived.

 

Abstract:

Optical matrix multiplication has been demonstrated repeatedly since the 1980s and has never been commercially competitive. Three conditions had to hold at the same time, and until recently none of them did: the array had to be large enough that data conversion cost less than the arithmetic, the workload had to run at a low enough precision to survive the exponential cost of analog compute, and someone had to put millions of modulator sites on a single die. Packaging built for AI networking supplied the first, the industry's move from BF16 to FP8 to FP4 supplied the second, and Neurophos supplied the third. These are necessary conditions rather than sufficient ones and Neurophos is completing the journey — engineering samples in the hands of partner customers at the end of 2028.