By Stephen NellisSAN FRANCISCO, July 29 (Reuters) - Eliyan, a startup that aims to ease the bottlenecks in transferring data between AI chips in data centers, ‌said on Wednesday it had raised $145 million in venture funding at a $1 billion ‌valuation. Cisco Systems, Lumentum and an early investor in networking pioneer Mellanox before its sale to Nvidia backed the raising, ​according to Santa Clara, California-based Eliyan. Regardless of who makes them, most AI chips today ‌face the same basic problem: They ⁠can process data much faster than they can send or receive it, which leaves pricey chips waiting and idle. "People have tried to build ⁠faster compute, faster processors and GPUs," Eliyan CEO and co-founder Ramin Farjadrad told Reuters in an interview. Nvidia overcame the connectivity issue in part by buying Mellanox for $6.8 billion in 2019.