News | LightOn

Monthly Newsletter

News and Press Releases

[En] Virtual Meetup presentation by outside invited speaker Claudio Gallichio on “Deep Reservoir Computing and Beyond: Fast and Lightweight Neural Networks“, Nov 19th, 2020
[En] Our ML Lead, Iacopo Poli presented “Rigging the hardware lottery: lighting the way out of a rut” at the Italian Association for Machine Learning meetup, Nov 18th, 2020
[En] Our ML engineer, Julien Launay presented “Computer vision and feedback alignment methods” at From Neuroscience to Artificially Intelligent Systems (NAISys), November 9-12th, 2020
[En] We have a new blog post out entitled “Ignorance is Bliss: Adversarial Robustness by Design with LightOn OPUs“, November 5th, 2020
[En] Our CTO and Co-founder, Laurent Daudet presented “Unlocking Transformative AI with Photonic Computing” at the IBM IEEE CAS/EDS – AI Compute Symposium, THINKLab, From Atoms to Applications, 21-22nd October 2020
[En] Virtual Meetup presentation by outside invited speaker Adam Gaier on “Weight Agnostic Neural Networks“, October 15th, 2020
[En] LightOn was a featured company at the AI Hardware Summit 2020, October 6th, 2020.
[En] Two papers accepted at NeurIPS 2020, the leading Artificial Intelligence Conference, with LightOn authors. Preprints available here and here, September 26th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “LightOn at HotChips 2020: The Three Days Ate the AI Chips“, August 20th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “LightOn Highlights from ICML 2020“, July 20th, 2020
[En] LightOn enters the Scaleway StartUp Program, July 7th, 2020.
[En] Virtual Meetup presentation by outside invited speaker Rakshith Sharma Srinivasa on “Handling Massive Data Rates with Localized Sketching” as featured on our blog, June 19th, 2020.
[En] Laurent Daudet, our CTO and co-founder will give a talk on LightOn’s technology at the Ellis QPhML 2020 virtual meeting on 07/07/2020. You can register here.
[En] The program for Hot Chips 2020 is out. June 15th, 2020.
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “An Easy Introduction to LightOnML“, June 11th, 2020
[En] “LightOn researchers explain how they trained an AI model on an optical co-processor“, VentureBeat covered our recent HotChips2020 submission, June 3rd, 2020
[En] Our White Paper v1.0 entitled “Photonic Computing for Massively Parallel AI”, is out! May 20th, 2020
[En] Video: LightOn @International Day of Light by Unesco, May 16th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Tackling Reinforcement Learning with the Aurora OPU“, May 14th, 2020
[En] Our poster entitled “Light-in-the-loop: using a photonics co-processor for scalable training of neural networks” has been accepted at Hot Chips 2020! May 12th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Optical Random Features versus SARS-CoV-2 Glycoprotein Trajectory: Round#2“, May 7th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Random Projections did it again!“, April 30th, 2020
[En] The NEWMA change point detection method featuring LightOn co-processors, designed jointly by Iacopo Poli, Lead ML Engineer at LightOn AI Research, Nicolas Keriven and Damien Garreau, is now available on IEEE Xplore, April 29th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “How to Perform Supervised Random Projections with Light“, April 23rd, 2020
[En] Our ML engineer, Amélie Chatelain presented her work on Molecular Dynamics and COVID19 at the first online Paris & Berlin WiMLDS.April 22nd, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Recover the Double Descent Curve with an OPU“, April 14th, 2020
[En] Press Release: LightOn launches LightOn Cloud 2.0 featuring Aurora OPUs, April 7th, 2020
[Fr] Communiqué de presse: LightOn lance le LightOn Cloud 2.0 avec des OPUs Aurora, 7 Avril 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Crash Course: create your own image classification model with PyTorch“, April1st, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Accelerating SARS-COv2 Molecular Dynamics Studies with Optical Random Features“, March 25, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Lifting Data … and Washing Machines: Kernel Computations from Optical Random features“, March 17, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Au Revoir Backprop ! Bonjour Optical Transfer Learning!“, February 20th, 2020
[En] We just published a new blog post entitled “Beyond Overfitting and Beyond Silicon: The double descent curve“, January 15th, 2020

News and on the move

2019

[En] The program and livestreaming information for LightOn’s 4th AI Research Workshop can be found in a new blog entry entitled “LightOn’s AI Research Workshop — FoRM #4: The Future of Random Matrices. Thursday, December 19th, 2019
[En] Our co-founder,Sylvain Gigan, is a featured speaker at the Paris Quantum Computing Technologies meetup December 18th, 2019
[En] LightOn is organizing The Future of Random Matrices workshop (FORM 4) on December 19th 2019 from 2pm till 5pm at IPPG/PC’UP. The event will be streamed live. The tentative program can be found at: https://lnkd.in/gHxZHs7
[En] A poster presentation at #NeurIPS2019 will be featuring LightOn’s Optical Processing Unit technology.
[En] A new blog post entitled “Supervised Random Projections made lighter” was published on Dec 7th, 2019
[En] Laurent Daudet, our CTO, attended the AI Hardware Summit (Mountain View, CA Sept. 19th) and presented LightOn’s technology at SuperComputing’19 conference (Denver, CO Nov. 19th), the NeuroTech forum (November 4th) and the “Quantum and Neuromorphic Technologies meet” workshop at C2N – Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (November 27th)
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO, attended the Huawei Connect Conference (Shanghai, Sept. 18-20th, 2019) and presented LightOn’s technology at the ExDCI “New technological paths for high performance chips targeting HPC and edge” workshop in Brussels (November 5-6th, 2019).
[En] LightOn was one of the few start-ups selected in the second round of the AI stream of the Creative Destruction Lab program in Toronto, Canada. October 28th, 2019
[En] LightOn’s Optical Processing Unit is featured in a paper to be presented at NeurIPS, a prestigious Artificial Intelligence conference.
[En] Our Summer blog series:
- LightOn’s Summer Series #3 — How I Stopped Worrying and Love Random Projections published on October 28th, 2019.
- LightOn’s Summer Series #2—Optical Computing: a New Hope published on August 20th, 2019.
- LightOn’s Summer Series #1 — Faith No Moore: Silicon Will Not Scale Indefinitely published on August 9th, 2019
[Fr] L’intelligence artificielle à la vitesse de la lumière, The Conversation, 25 août 2019 / Contrepoint, 27 Août 2019
[En] Light, a possible solution for a sustainable AI, The Conversation, 25 juillet 2019.
[En] We showed the capabilities of LightOn’s Optical Processing Unit (OPU) at the <Q|C|B> conference organized by Bpifrance, Quantonation, Atos and IBM, June 20th, 2019.
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO and co-founder was a Keynote speaker at Matlab Expo, France, 18 Juin 2019
[Fr] Alexis Houssou PDG et cofondateur du fonds d’investissement Hardware Club mentionne LightOn dans sa Tribune du Monde « Dans l’ombre, des start-up créent les briques matérielles indispensables aux applications de l’intelligence artificielle » 16 Juin 2019
[En] James Wang of ARK Ventures mentioned LightOn as one AI Chip company.June 6th 2019
LightOn is featured in “Startup Looks to Light Up Machine Learning”, The Next Platform, May 31st, 2019
[Fr] LightOn est dans “le Monde” L’intelligence artificielle à la vitesse de la lumière, 24 Avril 2019
[En] Our blog just featured a blog post by François Boniface, one of our Machine Learning engineer, on using Natural Language Processing (NLP) with our LightOn’s Optical Processing Unit: ‘Shedding Light on the “Grand Débat“‘, April 11th, 2019.
Our co-founder and CTO, Laurent Daudet presented LightOn’s technology at the IEEE International Nanodevices and Computing Conference (INC), 3-5 April 2019, Minatec, Grenoble, France
Our Advanced Optics Engineer, Kilian Muller, presented LightOn at the French Photonics Days, April 4th, 219, Bordeaux
Laurent Daudet participated in a review entitled “Machine learning and the physical sciences”, March 25th, 2019
Laurent Daudet gave a talk at the LKB Laboratory at ENS Paris, March 27th, 2019
Laurent Daudet gave a talk at the “Artificial Intelligence and Physics” conference organized by University of Paris Saclay Institut Pascal in Orsay, March 21st 2019.
Laurent Daudet gave a talk at the Paris AI Production meetup on March 19th, 2019.
Igor Carron, gave a talk at Image Sensor Europe 2019, London, March 13th-14th, 2019
LightOn won the first round prize from the France Invest annual Climate Commission, February 21st, 2019.
LightOn is featured in “L’explosion Cambrienne” on Usine Nouvelle, January 20th, 2019.
LightOn is featured in “La lettre de l’Innovation du CNRS”, 17 Janvier 2019

2018

[En] LightOn raises $3.3M to build a new computing paradigm for Artificial Intelligence, December 19th, 2018
[Fr] LightOn lève 2,9 millions d’euros pour construire un nouveau paradigme de calcul pour l’intelligence artificielle , 19 Décembre 2018.
LightOn won Second prize in the Paris AI Challenge organized by Région Ile de France (coverage: Les Echos), October 15th, 2018
Our co-founder Florent Krzakala will present a spotlight at NIPS 2018, the premier Artificial Intelligence conference.
Our CTO, Laurent Daudet presented LightOn’s technology at
- Bell Labs, NJ, October 11th, 2018
- Physics Next Workshop, Long Island, NY, October 9th, 2018
- Criteo AI Lab (with Iacopo Poli), September 2018
- Expert Community ATOS, Madrid, Spain, September 2018
Our CEO, Igor Carron presented LightOn’s technology at the Future of Wireless organized by Huawei Stockholm, September 3rd, 2018
Our co-founder, Florent Krzakala, organized the Cargese Workshop on Statistical Physics in Cargese, Corsica, August 2018
[Fr] LightOn accelere l’IA avec ses co-processeurs Optiques, Usine Nouvelle, 14 Juillet 2018
[Fr] LightOn, l’accélérateur optique de l’intelligence artificielle, remporte le prix Atos – Joseph Fourier, Usine Nouvelle, 6 Juillet 2018
[En] The co-founders of LightOn received the 2018 Atos Joseph Fourier Prize in Artificial Intelligence. Press release Atos: “Atos and GENCI announce Winners of Atos Joseph Fourier Award 2018” July 5th, 2018
[En] LightOn was selected as one of the top 10 startups in the Paris AI Challenge, Press releases [Fr] AI Challenge Paris Region 2018: les 10 start-up sélectionnées dévoilées. (also on ActuaIA). July 4th, 2018.
[En] Our engineer, Iacopo Poli, will give a spotlight talk at Criteo Research 4th annual Machine Learning in the Real World Workshop on the use of LightOn’s technology in real world machine Learning. The event takes place Friday 28th, 2018.
[Fr/En] LightOn a reçu le prix du Jury de Futur.e.s Samedi 22 Juin 2018. LightOn was awarded the Prix du Jury at Futur;e.s festival on Saturday June 22nd 2018
[Fr] LightOn sera a Futur;e.s du 20 au 22 Juin 2018 . Quelques articles qui mentionnent LightOn à l’occasion de cette manifestation et du projet Innov’Up Proto
- :Article d’annonce des 16 lauréats INNOV’Up Proto sur le site de Cap Digital
- Article de présentation de l’appel INNOV’Up Proto et du rôle de Cap Digital (publication : janvier 2018)
- LightOn: Faster, Better, Cheaper, Stronger
- Album Facebook avec les visuels
- Article blog Futur.e.s :
- Un tweet pour chaque proto avec le #icidemain
[En] LightOn mentioned in EETimes ‘ Arm Ready to Sacrifice Profits for Long-Term IoT Growth/ Hardware gets airtime at AI conference” June 14, 2018
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO, presented LightOn at CogX18, the festival of AI, in London. he was invited to speak at the panel on the Cutting Edge track on the Future of Computing (video). June 11th 2018
[Fr/En] Laurent Daudet, our CTO, spoke at BioComp 2018 at Université de Bordeaux
[En] Iacopo Poli, ML engineer at LightOn, is a co-author of a new paper entitled: “NEWMA: A new method for scalable model-free online change-point“, May 29th, 2018.
[Fr] Igor Carron a présenté LightOn à Vivatech sur le stand de la Région Ile-de-France, 24 Mai 2018.
[Fr] Laurent Daudet, our CTO, presented LightOn at OIP’21: Optics for Infirmation Processing in the 21th century in Florence, Italy. may 24th 2018.
[Fr] Laurent Daudet à présenté LightOn à la journée spéciale “Intelligence Artificielle – Apprentissage Automatique, 22 Mai 2018
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO, presented LightOn at the Huawei Strategy and Technology Workshop 2018 in Shenzhen May 16, 2018
[En] Laurent Daudet, our CTO will be presenting LightOn at the first Machine Intelligence Garage Meetup hosted at Digital Catapult in London on Wednesday March 14th , 2018. You can register here.
[En/Fr] LightOn was featured on a France24 TV Report, February 16th, 2018. French version / English Version.
[En] LightOn is sponsoring the second OpenMined meetup at La Paillasse. OpenMined is a Federated Machine Learning project (February 17th, 2018).
[En] Press Release: LightOn Cloud offers faster large-scale Artificial Intelligence. Register your expression of interest to be a beta user here. February 16th, 2018
[Fr] Le cloud LightOn accélère l’Intelligence Artificielle à grande échelle Les ingénieurs de Data Science / Machine Learning intéressés par un essai du LightOn Cloud peuvent s’inscrire à l’adresse suivante. 16 Février 2018
[Fr] Our CEO, Igor, est mentionné dans l’article de l’Usine Nouvelle “Qui sont les 100 Français qui comptent dans l’intelligence artificielle ?”, 7 Février 2018
[Fr] On parle de LightOn dans Les Echos “Informatique optique : le bout du tunnel ?”, 22 Janvier 2018.
[En] LightOn supported the first OpenMined Hackathon in Paris ( Private and federated machine learning, blockchain, multi-party computation, and homomorphic encryption and related tech). Saturday, January 13th, 2018.
[En] LightOn was a co-sponsor of the workshop on “Quantum Technologies: A Path Toward Applications”/”Les technologies quantiques : en route vers les applications” organized by the Fédération Française de Sociétés Scientifiques (F2S) at Ecole normale Supérieure, Jan 11th, 2018

2017

[En] LightOn organized a mini-workshop on The Future of Random Projections, Dec 22nd, 2017
[En] First Light ! December 20th, 2017. More info in our upcoming Newsletter.
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO, will attend ATOMS 2017, Hardware Club’s First Festival, November 16th, 2017 in Paris, France
[En] Laurent Daudet, our CTO, will present at the MEGA GdR workshop on “Random matrix advances in large dimensional statistics and machine learning“, at Université Paris Descartes, November 14th 2017
[Fr] LightOn est lauréate du concours INNOV’UP Proto. “La Région Île-de-France dévoile les lauréats INNOV’UP Proto 2017 !“, November 10th, 2017
[Fr/Ge] LightOn was featured in a report on Artificial Intelligence for the Arte Journal, coverage starts at 1:05 [Fr, Ge] October 14th, 2017
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO, was a speaker at the ‘AI Hardware: the next big conquest?’ panel at the France is AI Conference, Oct 5-6 2017
[En] LightOn is listed as one of the more than 400 AI companies in Europe.
[Fr] LightOn is featured in a special edition of “La Recherche” about the uses of light. July 4th, 2017.
[En] Laurent Daudet, our CTO, will be in Tokyo, Japan next week June 26-30, 2017
[En/Fr] LightOn was selected as one of few startups in the 2017 New Technology Venture Accelerator (NETVA) program (also NETVA 2017 : 20 startups françaises de hautes technologies se préparent pour les Etats-Unis et le Canada !)
[En] Our second newsletter came out on May the 4th
[En] Our CTO, Laurent Daudet and our CEO, Igor Carron attended the 5th International Conference on Learning Representations (#ICLR2017) in Toulon, France. April 24-26, 2017
[En] LightOn is selected as a Semi-Finalist of 2017 SPIE Startup Challenge (Track 2: Imaging, Display, Lasers, Semiconductors). Semi-finals will take place at Photonics West in SF, CA.
[Fr] A Paris, l’innovation a vu de la lumière, Libération, January 7, 2017

2016

[Fr] LightOn dope le machine learning avec son co-processeur optique, Le Monde Informatique, December 22, 2016.
[Fr] LightOn révolutionne le calcul informatique,ESPCI actualités, December 21, 2016.
[Fr] Grands Prix de l’Innovation 2016, Groupe Aéroport de Paris, December 19, 2016
[Fr] [Startups] Les Grands Prix de l’Innovation de la Ville de Paris, video, Digital Business News
[Fr] Grands prix de l’Innovation: et les 8 lauréats 2016 sont…, Paris.fr, December 19, 2016
[Fr] Des Français mettent la lumière au service du Big Data, #LetsGoFrance blog, December 19, 2016
[Fr] Grands Prix de l’Innovation de la Ville de Paris : 7 finalistes et 2 lauréats issus de l’incubateur Agoranov , December 15, 2016
[En] LightOn was awarded one of the Grand Prix de l’Innovation de la ville de Paris in the “Technologie Numérique” category. December 14, 2016
[Fr] Co-processeur optique : LightOn remporte le prix des start-up normaliennes, VIPress.net, November 28, 2016
[En] LightOn was awarded the prix du Jury of the 2016 “Prix de la Startup Normalienne” competition with a ceremony held at Ecole Normale Supérieure, November 25, 2016
[En] Our CEO, Igor Carron, made a presentation at EuroIoTA16at Telecom ParisTech on “Sketching Data Streams at the Speed of Light” that featured LightOn’s technology, November 25, 2016
[En] LightOn is now a member of OpticsValley. November 16th, 2016
[En] LightOn was mentioned in VentureBeat’s “France makes its bid to be recognized as a global AI hub“. Nov 6th, 2016
[En] LightOn was featured in “Computing with Lasers Could Power Up Genomics and AI” in MIT Technology Review, November 4th, 2016
[Fr] LightOn was featured in “5 start-up qui veulent changer le monde par la science” on www.chefdentreprise.com, November 4th, 2016
[En/Fr] LightOn was selected as a finalist of the Grand Prix de L’innovation de Paris ( Catégorie Technologies Numériques ), October 18, 2016
[En] LightOn is listed on the European Machine Intelligence Landscape by @ProjectJunoAI
[En] LightOn is among the top finalists of the Hello Tomorrow Challenge @hellotmrc Top 6 in Data & AI track, September 20, 2016.
[En] LightOn was mentioned in Jack Clark‘s Import.AI newsletter. September 12, 2016
[En] LightOn has been selected as one of #Top500 deeptech startups of the Hello Tomorrow Challenge. September 6th, 2016
[En] LightOn is featured in “Move over silicon: Machine learning boom means we need new chips” in New Scientist, The article appears in print under the headline “Making light work of AI”. August 23rd, 2016
[En/Fr] Our co-founder, Sylvain Gigan received the 2016 Fabry – de Gramont prize from the Société Française d’Optique thanks in part to his applied work with LightOn. July 4, 2016
[En] Our CTO and Co-Founder, Laurent Daudet, presented some of our work at the 2016 SIAM Conference on Imaging Science in Albuquerque, NM. More information can be found here. May 26, 2016
[Fr] LightOn mentionée dans “L’intelligence artificielle en passe de réaliser des sauts quantiques ?” d’Olivier Ezratty, sur FrenchWeb, 12 Mai 2016.
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO presented some of our technology at the Paris Machine Learning Meetup #12 Season 3: ML Hardware, April 26th, 2016
[En] Our CTO and Co-Founder, Laurent Daudet, presented a poster at ICASSP 2016 on “Random Projections through multiple optical scattering: Approximating kernels at the speed of light” , March 22, 2016
[Fr] Entrée en incubation de la start-up LightOn, La lettre Innovation du CNRS, 17, 26 Novembre 2015
[En] An ultrafast and low-energy consumption optical co-processor for big data, Phys.org, Nov 20, 2015. Attendant ArXiv Preprint:
- Random Projections through multiple optical scattering: Approximating kernels at the speed of light, Alaa Saade,Francesco Caltagirone, Igor Carron, Laurent Daudet,Angélique Drémeau, Sylvain Gigan, Florent Krzakala, arXiv:1510.06664 [cs.ET]
[Fr] Entrée en incubation du projet de startup LightOn : un nouveau co-processeur optique ultra rapide et économe en énergie pour le big data , PSL Research University Paris, Nov 12, 2015
[Fr] Entrée en incubation du projet de startup LightOn, UPMC Sorbonne Universités, Nov 12, 2015
d one of the 2016 Grand Prix de l’Innovation de Paris in the “Technologie Numérique” category. December 14, 2016
[En] LightOn was awarded the prix du Jury of the 2016 “Prix de la Startup Normalienne” competition with a ceremony held at Ecole Normale Supérieure, November 25, 2016
[En] Our CEO, Igor Carron, made a presentation at EuroIoTA16at Telecom ParisTech on “Sketching Data Streams at the Speed of Light” that featured LightOn’s technology, November 25, 2016
[En] LightOn is now a member of OpticsValley. November 16th, 2016
[En] LightOn was mentioned in VentureBeat’s “France makes its bid to be recognized as a global AI hub“. Nov 6th, 2016
[En] LightOn was featured in “Computing with Lasers Could Power Up Genomics and AI” in MIT Technology Review, November 4th, 2016
[Fr] LightOn was featured in “5 start-up qui veulent changer le monde par la science” on www.chefdentreprise.com, November 4th, 2016
[En/Fr] LightOn was selected as a finalist of the Grand Prix de L’innovation de Paris ( Catégorie Technologies Numériques ), October 18, 2016
[En] LightOn is listed on the European Machine Intelligence Landscape by @ProjectJunoAI
[En] LightOn is among the top finalists of the Hello Tomorrow Challenge @hellotmrc Top 6 in Data & AI track, September 20, 2016.
[En] LightOn was mentioned in Jack Clark‘s Import.AI newsletter. September 12, 2016
[En] LightOn has been selected as one of #Top500 deeptech startups of the Hello Tomorrow Challenge. September 6th, 2016
[En] LightOn is featured in “Move over silicon: Machine learning boom means we need new chips” in New Scientist, The article appears in print under the headline “Making light work of AI”. August 23rd, 2016
[En/Fr] Our co-founder, Sylvain Gigan received the 2016 Fabry – de Gramont prize from the Société Française d’Optique thanks in part to his applied work with LightOn. July 4, 2016
[En] Our CTO and Co-Founder, Laurent Daudet, presented some of our work at the 2016 SIAM Conference on Imaging Science in Albuquerque, NM. More information can be found here. May 26, 2016
[Fr] LightOn mentionée dans “L’intelligence artificielle en passe de réaliser des sauts quantiques ?” d’Olivier Ezratty, sur FrenchWeb, 12 Mai 2016.
[En] Igor Carron, our CEO presented some of our technology at the Paris Machine Learning Meetup #12 Season 3: ML Hardware, April 26th, 2016
[En] Our CTO and Co-Founder, Laurent Daudet, presented a poster at ICASSP 2016 on “Random Projections through multiple optical scattering: Approximating kernels at the speed of light” , March 22, 2016

2015

[Fr] Entrée en incubation de la start-up LightOn, La lettre Innovation du CNRS, 17, 26 Novembre 2015
[En] An ultrafast and low-energy consumption optical co-processor for big data, Phys.org, Nov 20, 2015. Attendant ArXiv Preprint:
- Random Projections through multiple optical scattering: Approximating kernels at the speed of light, Alaa Saade,Francesco Caltagirone, Igor Carron, Laurent Daudet,Angélique Drémeau, Sylvain Gigan, Florent Krzakala, arXiv:1510.06664 [cs.ET]
[Fr] Entrée en incubation du projet de startup LightOn : un nouveau co-processeur optique ultra rapide et économe en énergie pour le big data , PSL Research University Paris, Nov 12, 2015
[Fr] Entrée en incubation du projet de startup LightOn, UPMC Sorbonne Universités, Nov 12, 2015