iPronics and Barcelona Supercomputing Center partner to advance silicon photonics optical circuit switching for AI cluster interconnect.
iPronics, a pioneer in silicon photonics-based optical circuit switching for AI infrastructure, and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) have announced a two-year strategic technology collaboration focused on advancing programmable optical networking for next-generation GPU-based AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.
For cloud providers and hyperscalers, integrating programmable optics has historically required custom software. iPronics ONE changes this paradigm by offering a rack-ready, plug-and-play optical circuit switching architecture designed to integrate seamlessly into existing GPU environments. Through dynamic, workload-aware network control across hardware and software within BSC's infrastructure, the collaboration provides cloud providers and hyperscalers with a clear path to maximizing GPU utilization, reducing latency, and lowering energy consumption without replacing their existing software stack.
"AI infrastructure is reaching a point where scaling compute also requires rethinking the network," said Christian Dupont, CEO of iPronics. "Networking needs to become more dynamic and more closely aligned with the behavior of AI workloads. Our strategic collaboration with BSC is an important milestone in bringing programmable optical networking deeper into the AI infrastructure stack."
The collaboration centers on integrating optical hardware and software as a unified AI networking architecture. iPronics will provide its programmable optical switching platform, low-level software, and APIs, while BSC will develop software above the switch-management layer. Together, the teams are developing workload-aware networking approaches that align the communication requirements of AI applications with dynamically reconfigurable optical connectivity.
"As AI and HPC systems scale, the interconnect is becoming an increasingly important part of overall system architecture," said Antonio J. Peña, Leading Researcher and Group Leader at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. "Our collaboration with iPronics gives us the opportunity to explore how programmable optical networking and the software stack can work together to support more dynamic and efficient computing infrastructures."
iPronics' platform will be integrated within BSC's research-class GPU and HPC infrastructure, creating an environment for the teams to advance networking approaches across AI training and inference, including Large Language Model and Mixture-of-Experts workloads. The collaboration will generate system-level insights to inform the architecture of future AI infrastructure.
The BSC partnership adds to iPronics' momentum following its recent $125 million Series B round, co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital, with participation from NVIDIA. The funding brings the company's total capitalization to $177 million. iPronics has also opened a U.S. office in Santa Clara, California, to expand product strategy, customer deployments, and AI infrastructure partnerships.
iPronics is a silicon photonics company founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Universitat Politècnica de València. Its flagship product, iPronics ONE, provides programmable optical connectivity within and across racks for dynamic AI infrastructure. With integrated control, telemetry, and APIs, the platform enables real-time reconfiguration to improve GPU utilization, reduce energy consumption, and scale without costly network overhauls. The company is backed by investors including NVIDIA, Maverick Silicon, Light Street Capital, Triatomic Capital, Bosch Ventures, Catalight Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, The Tate Family Trust, Fine Structure Ventures, Build Collective, Criteria Venture Tech, and Amadeus Capital Partners.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center is one of the world's leading supercomputing centers and hosts MareNostrum 5, one of Europe's most powerful supercomputers. The centre specializes in High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence, providing supercomputing infrastructure and services to Spanish and European scientists while generating technology for transfer to society. BSC's research spans computer sciences, life sciences, Earth sciences, computer applications in science and engineering, and computational social sciences and humanities. The BSC Consortium comprises the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of the Government of Spain (60%), the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat de Catalunya (30%), and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (10%). The centre manages the Spanish Supercomputing Network and hosts EuroHPC JU, which leads large-scale HPC investment and deployment across Europe.