Relativity raises $22m, lands $40m hollow-core fiber order

Relativity Networks, the Orlando-based hollow-core fiber developer, said on August 19 that it had closed a $22 million SAFE and signed a $40 million follow-on order from an unnamed "leading hyperscaler." Data Center Dynamics reported the announcement. The two numbers amount to one thesis: AI has outgrown the single data center, and the cable that connects buildings is becoming a financing category of its own.

Jason Eichenholz founded Relativity and runs it as CEO. Its ChronoCore fiber sends light down an air-filled center channel ringed by glass tubes in a honeycomb pattern, a structure that cuts chromatic dispersion and lets light travel faster than it does through solid glass. The selling point is distance. Conventional fiber has generally kept data centers within 60 kilometers of a power source or of one another before latency becomes the bound; hollow-core stretches that bound. It does not decide where AI gets built. It decides how far apart the pieces can sit.

Eichenholz frames it as a geographic shift: "AI is no longer scaling inside a data center. It is scaling across geography." The order attached to that quote is a contract Relativity describes as a follow-on; its own account of the relationship is a test of ChronoCore between two data centers, then this purchase. The customer is not named.

The capital is a SAFE, a simple agreement for future equity. Relativity said the round came in at more than double its target. New investors include Rhapsody Venture Partners, Bell Ventures Inc., and Faster Than Glass LLC. A SAFE postpones valuation to the next priced round, so the cost of this capital is not settled until a Series A arrives. For an early-stage supplier, that is the right order: get the customer evidence first, argue about the price later.

The factory line is shared. ChronoCore fiber is drawn at Prysmian's facility in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and cabled at Prysmian's plant in Claremont, North Carolina; couplers, fiber characterization, and installation training stay in Orlando. Last month the two companies said they had produced their highest-density hollow-core fiber cable to date using ChronoCore. That milestone matters because Relativity is selling a new cable standard while Prysmian carries the scale.

The sequence is the story: the manufacturing milestone, the hyperscaler test, the follow-on order, the equity round. The $40 million is modest set against campus-scale construction budgets. As evidence, though, it is the cleanest kind an early vendor can offer. A named customer of this sort would be better. But the unnamed one is enough to price the next round, and that is what a SAFE is for.