Taara, the freespace optics startup within Google’s skunkworks labs, is being spun out as a standalone company.

Alphabet’s X lab this week announced Taara is graduating from the “Moonshot Factory” to become an independent company and has raised a round of funding led by venture capital firm Series X Capital.

Terms were not shared but the FT reports Alphabet will retain a minority stake in Taara.

Launched in 2017, Taara is a moonshot project for connectivity at X, Alphabet's skunkworks lab. It uses optical laser technology from X's failed Loon project, which tried to deliver Internet connectivity via high-altitude balloons.

Taara’s Lightbridge product transmits information between terminals at speeds of up to 20 gigabits per second across up to 20km as a very narrow, invisible beam of light. The company says each unit consumes around 40W.

“From beaming connectivity over the world's deepest river, to deploying in densely populated neighborhoods, every pilot project and every partnership has helped bring us closer to overcoming the stubborn connectivity gaps that prevent nearly 3 billion people from accessing the Internet,” said Mahesh Krishnaswamy, CEO of Taara.

Taara has helped provide Internet services in more than a dozen countries including Australia, Kenya, and Fiji, and has been involved in trials with Liquid Intelligent Technologies in Congo, as well as with Bluetown in India and Digicel in the Pacific Islands. Other previously announced users of Taara include Liberty Networks in the Caribbean and Bharti Airtel in rural India. Vodafone recently tested using Taara nodes on drones in Spain for emergency situations.

T-Mobile has also used Taara in the US during two large-scale events; the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and Coachella. Taara was equipped to a mobile cell tower on wheels (aka a COW) at the balloon festival, and a tower disguised as a palm tree at Coachella.

Taara chip debuts

The company recently officially revealed the Taara chip; a silicon photonic chip that uses light to transmit high-speed data through the air.

“While our first-generation technology, the Taara Lightbridge, steers light physically using a system of mirrors, sensors, and hardware, this new chip uses software to steer, track, and correct the beam of light without bulky moving parts,” said Krishnaswamy. “We've taken most of the core functionality of the Taara Lightbridge—which is the size of a traffic light—and shrunken it down to the size of a fingernail.”

The Taara Lightbridge node steers the light physically, while the new chip removes most of the mechanical components and designed a solid-state solution for automatic beam steering. It uses an optical phased array system that steers, tracks, and corrects light using software. Each Taara chip is equipped with hundreds of light emitters; the software manipulates the light's wavefront and directs it where it needs to go.

In tests, Krishnaswamy said the company has successfully transmitted data at 10Gbps over distances of 1km outdoors using two Taara chips. The chip will be available as part of its next product, launching in 2026

“We plan to extend both the chip’s range and capacity by creating an iteration with thousands of emitters,” he added.

The Taara chip, he says, will be deployed in mesh networks that can support Internet networks in underserved regions, data center networks, autonomous vehicle networks, and more.