Chesterbrook Startup Cornelis Networks Raises $205 Million to Move AI Data Faster

CHESTERBROOK — Cornelis Networks has raised $205 million, the largest venture capital round for a Greater Philadelphia startup so far in 2026, betting that the AI boom needs faster plumbing between chips.

South Carolina-based IAG Capital Partners led the Series C round, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The company did not disclose its valuation.

Cornelis builds the high-speed networking technology that moves data between processors inside AI data centers. When thousands of chips train a model together, slow interconnects leave expensive hardware sitting idle.

The company spun out of Intel in 2020 and has grown from 40 employees to more than 250. Its customers include Dell, Lenovo, Supermicro and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with deployments at the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the U.S. Department of Energy.

“My role is to grow the company from being a single product, get-one-generation-out-the-door startup into a full-scale function company,” CEO Lisa Spelman told the Business Journal. “It’s all about scale.” Spelman joined in 2024 after two decades at Intel, where she ran the Xeon processor business.

Alongside the funding, Cornelis announced a partnership with Qualcomm Technologies on next-generation AI data center designs and began shipping its Active Compute Fabric, networking technology meant to let AI chips process and transmit data at the same time.

The raise positions Cornelis as a challenger to Nvidia’s dominance in AI infrastructure, betting that buyers want open networking that works with any vendor’s chips.

For the Philadelphia region, the deal is a reminder that the AI economy runs on unglamorous layers. Nobody picks a chatbot for its data center cabling, but $205 million says the cabling matters.