As the tech powering the AI boom becomes an increasingly strategic asset driving global competition, a new player to watch has popped up far from the nerve centers of the world’s chip industry: Egypt.

In March 2025, Cairo-based semiconductor startup InfiniLink raised a $10 million seed round from investors including Taiwan’s MediaTek, a major semiconductor firm currently collaborating with US AI chip giant Nvidia. This backing is helping this little-known Egyptian company tackle a global problem as the AI boom gobbles up power and bandwidth.

Founded in 2022 by Ahmed Aboul-Ella and Botros George, InfiniLink is developing solutions for the next generation of data centers. “We aspire to be a key player in providing connectivity chips for AI-driven data centers from this region of the world, which is less known for creating technologies,” George, the company's chief technology officer, told Al-Monitor in an interview. 

The startup is focusing on what it dubs “silicon photonics integrated optical transceiver chiplets technology” to enable ultra-high-speed and energy-efficient data connectivity. In simpler terms, they’re using light to transfer data between chips faster as a solution for energy-hungry data centers. Global giant Intel is also targeting similar innovations and touting the technology’s potential to revolutionize high-speed data processing.