Nicholas Harris
Founder and CEO of Lightmatter, which builds photonic interconnects for AI infrastructure
- Founder and CEO, Lightmatter12
Nicholas (Nick) Harris is the founder and CEO of Lightmatter, a photonics company founded by MIT researchers in 2017 that builds optical interconnects, light engines and reference systems for large AI computing clusters. Harris co-authored early research on running neural networks on programmable nanophotonic circuits.14
Career
In 2016 Harris co-authored, with Yichen Shen, Dirk Englund, Marin Soljačić and others, a paper on deep learning with coherent nanophotonic circuits. Lightmatter was founded by MIT researchers in 2017, and its leadership page lists Harris as founder and CEO.41
Lightmatter's other founders listed today are Darius Bunandar, its chief scientist, and Thomas Graham, its head of machine learning.1
Products and projects
Lightmatter describes its work as building photonic infrastructure for AI: interconnects, lasers and, eventually, compute itself. In March 2025 the company announced the Passage M1000 photonic interposer and the Passage L200 co-packaged optics product.12
In January 2026 the company introduced Guide, a light engine built on what it calls Very Large Scale Photonics, which integrates many lasers on one platform to move laser production toward foundry manufacturing.3
Work
Deep Learning with Coherent Nanophotonic Circuits (external site: arxiv.org)
Co-author of a 2016 paper proposing a fully optical neural network architecture and experimentally demonstrating essential parts of it on a programmable nanophotonic processor.4
Passage M1000 (external site: lightmatter.com)
Lightmatter's 3D photonic interposer reference platform for connecting XPUs and switches, announced in March 2025 alongside the Passage L200 co-packaged optics, with Harris quoted as founder and CEO.2
Career timeline
Oct 7, 2016
Co-authored the paper Deep Learning with Coherent Nanophotonic Circuits.4
2017
Founded Lightmatter with fellow MIT researchers.1
Mar 31, 2025
Lightmatter announced the Passage M1000 photonic interposer and Passage L200 co-packaged optics.2
Mar 31, 2025
Lightmatter named the Guide light engine as the companion laser source for Passage M1000.2
Related people
More sourced profiles at the same organization, in the same field, or from the same school.
- Darius BunandarAlso at Lightmatter
- Aaron TeoChips and hardware
- Alex RivesAlso from MIT
- Andrew BosworthChips and hardware
- Alexander AminiAlso from MIT
- Andrew FeldmanChips and hardware
- Amnon ShashuaAlso from MIT
- Andrew WatermanChips and hardware
- Andrew NgAlso from MIT
- Andy BechtolsheimChips and hardware
- Bill DallyAlso from MIT
- Antonio NeriChips and hardware
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