Relativity Networks announced $22 million in SAFE note funding from Rhapsody Venture Partners, Bell Ventures, and Faster Than Glass, alongside a separate $40 million follow-on order from an unnamed hyperscaler, as the company works to address geographic constraints facing the data center industry, which is projected to spend up to $4 trillion by decade’s end.
The startup develops hollow-core fiber technology, which transmits light through a vacuum chamber rather than glass, enabling data transmission roughly 50 percent faster than conventional fiber. CEO Jason Eichenholz said the technology could reduce signal travel time from about five microseconds per kilometer to roughly three and a half, a difference that becomes increasingly significant as AI compute clusters spread across larger physical distances. He noted that data center campuses now often span hundreds of acres and multiple buildings, making latency a growing constraint on system design.
Eichenholz said the technology was particularly suited to multi-campus deployments, where separate facilities must operate as a single synchronized system despite being built near available power rather than one another. He framed the development as part of an emerging shift in AI infrastructure optimization, following earlier eras focused first on raw compute and then on internal data center networking, toward now optimizing geography itself to expand the distances developers can span before latency becomes limiting.
