How to Buy Lightmatter Stock in 2024

Lightmatter is aiming to reinvent computation.

The company, founded by three MIT alumni, makes photonic chips that are capable of performing calculations at nearly the speed of light.

Photonic computing, which I break down in further detail below, is not only an order of magnitude faster than using transistors, it's also far more energy efficient.

Both of these — increasing performance and reducing power usage — are critical problems to solve as artificial intelligence becomes a bigger part of our world.

This technology, if Lightmatter gets it right, would be worth billions.

And, if you're an accredited investor, you can invest in Lightmatter stock today.

How to buy Lightmatter stock

Lightmatter is a private company, which means it doesn't have a stock symbol or public stock price and you can't purchase shares in your regular brokerage.

However, accredited investors can buy Lightmatter shares directly from existing shareholders through a marketplace called Hiive.

There are over 2,000 pre-IPO companies on Hiive's marketplace right now, including Databricks, Anthropic, and Lightmatter:

As of the time of this writing, there are 5 listings of Lightmatter stock on Hiive.

Here's how to invest in Lightmatter stock:

1. Go to Hiive's website and click “Sign Up."
2. Enter your name and basic details.
3. Agree to the terms and click "Sign Up" at the bottom.
4. Answer a series of eligibility questions.
5. Wait for Hiive to get back to you regarding your account.
6. After you receive confirmation, go to the site, log in, and search for “Lightmatter” stock.
7. Browse listings and purchase the stock. You can either accept that price and buy directly or make an offer and negotiate directly with the seller.

Learn more about Hiive in our full review or click the button to get started right away:

Register for Hiive

Can retail investors buy Lightmatter stock?

Lightmatter is a private company, which means retail investors can't buy its stock.

Given that its latest round of funding was in December 2023, the Lightmatter IPO is also likely at least a few years further down the road.

Alphabet (GOOGL), through its venture capital arm GV (formerly Google Ventures), led the company's Series C-2 round, which raised $155 million and valued the company at $1.2 billion.

Technically, because of this stake, an investment in Google would give you indirect exposure to Lightmatter stock.

But, assuming Google invested $75 million, this stake represents 0.0036% of Google's $2.1 trillion market capitalization — not exactly a needle-moving investment.

Still, as we've seen with Microsoft and OpenAI, there's a chance this investment could turn into a more robust partnership, which could have much larger implications for Google's business.

That may be something to keep an eye on.

Who founded Lightmatter?

Lightermatter was founded by 3 MIT alumni: Nicholas Harris (CEO), Darius Bunandar (Chief Scientist), and Thomas Graham (CFO).

Prior to MIT, Harris worked at the semiconductor company Micron Technology (MU).

While there, he discovered that the traditional approach for improving computer performance — that is, cramming more transistors onto every chip — would eventually hit its limit.

Harris left Micron to work on photonic quantum computing for his PhD at MIT.

During that time, he developed silicon-based integrated photonic chips that use light, rather than electricity, to transmit and process information. This work led to dozens of patents and more than 80 research papers.

After studying and applying the use of photonic chips for deep learning applications, Harris realized he could attract more funding through a startup than as a researcher at MIT.

Harris then convinced Bunandar, who was studying in the same lab, and Graham to join him. The co-founders hit the ground running when they won the 2017 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

What does Lightmatter do?

At the base of all computing operations is a lot of math. This is where the term “computing” comes from.

A general-purpose computer chip (CPU) can do normal math, but it solves complex problems by breaking them down into a series of smaller problems and solving those sequentially.

However, traditional computer chips struggle to solve the problems posed by artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. For these problems, we need special hardware, like that sold by Nvidia (NVDA).

The problem is, as the demand increases for AI-based applications, more of these calculations need to be done and at faster speeds.

At some point, we may reach the limit of traditional computing technology, which relies on a series of basic operations with cascading logic gates and transistors. New technology and new architecture may be needed.

That's where Lightmatter comes in.

Lightmatter's photonic chips work by sending a beam of light through a number of tiny sensors. By tracking the changes in the phase or path of the light, the solution is found as fast as the light can reach the opposite end of the chip.

When compared to traditional computer chips, which use electricity (electrons), Lightmatter's photonic chips, which use light (photons), are both faster and more energy efficient.

How much is Lightmatter worth?

Lightmatter most recently raised $155 million at a valuation of $1.2 billion in December 2023.

This round, which was led by Google Ventures, gave Lightmatter unicorn status (a private company that is worth at least $1 billion) and brought its total funding raised to $420 million.

Here's how its valuation has changed over time: