Ayar Labs#64
About
Ayar Labs is a silicon photonics company developing optical I/O ('co-packaged optics') chiplets that replace electrical interconnects with light, enabling far higher bandwidth and lower power for AI and high-performance computing systems. It was founded in 2015 out of research at MIT, UC Berkeley and CU Boulder.
From X
The thing slowing down AI isn't necessarily the chips. It's the copper wires running between them Above a certain bandwidth, copper loses data, generates heat, and runs out of physical room to scale. Ayar Labs just raised $500M, with NVIDIA and AMD among the investors, to replace those copper interconnects with light 8 terabits per second at up to 20x more performance per watt. Same principle as fiber optic cables, just running between processors inside the same package instead of between buildings
Breaking news 💥🎉 $SIVE evaluating a Nasdaq NYC dual listing. This is Not random after the last couple of weeks in flows from the US. Majority of photonics business tied to US. Partners like Jabil, Ayar labs, POET and F100 companies. AI optics gaining traction. This is about access to US capital and higher valuation multiples. https://t.co/Khp4Bz1ieh
Optical interconnect startup Ayar Labs raised $500 million in a Series E round valuing it at $3.75 billion, with participation from Nvidia $NVDA, AMD $AMD, MediaTek, and others. Ayar Labs says the capital will help accelerate production and test capacity of its co-packaged optics solutions.
Made a list of the three most admired Silicon Photonics companies in Silicon Valley. Below is the biggest investors that join these outrageous multi-billion valuations. But what do these investors know about this market? Probably less than most of us. It is probably more likely they end-up as Intellego and Azelio! Ayar Labs (Series E $3.75B) - NVIDIA - AMD Ventures - Sequoia Capital - Insight Partners - MediaTek - ARK Invest (Cathie Wood) - Qatar Investment Authority (State Sovereign Wealth Fund) - Neuberger Berman (Lead Investor) Celestial AI (Final Series C1 Round) (Note: This was their final private round before being acquired by Marvell Technology for $3.2B+earn-out). - BlackRock - Fidelity Management & Rese - Tiger Global Management - Samsung Catalyst Fund - AMD Ventures - Temasek (Singapore State Sovereign Wealth Fund) - Porsche Automobil Holding Lightmatter (Series D Round $4.4B). -T. Rowe Price (Lead Investor) - Google Ventures / Alphabet - Fidelity Management & Resea - HPE Pathfinder (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
48 hours of $SIVE catalysts. Yesterday: $SIVE laser arrays embedded in GlobalFoundries' silicon photonics reference designs. Today: Ayar Labs — the leading CPO solution provider for AI scale-up — joined NVIDIA's NVLink Fusion ecosystem. Why this matters for $SIVE: Ayar Labs' co-packaged optics solution requires high-precision InP DFB lasers as the optical light source. $SIVE is a publicly named partner of Ayar Labs for exactly that role — CPO External Light Sources. Now stack the supply chain: $SIVE → Ayar Labs → NVIDIA NVLink Fusion → next-gen AI scale-up architecture $SIVE → GlobalFoundries silicon photonics platform → entire foundry customer base Two distinct paths into the heart of AI infrastructure. Both with $SIVE lasers in the stack. Context on Ayar Labs in case you missed it: → $3.75B valuation after March 2026's $500M Series E → Strategic investors include NVIDIA, AMD, MediaTek, Alchip → TeraPHY optical engine processes 8 terabits/second per unit → Described as "the industry's first proven CPO solution for AI scale-up" This is the company NVIDIA just embedded in NVLink Fusion. And it's a publicly named $SIVE partner. Three names did the structural validating in the last 48 hours: NVIDIA. GlobalFoundries. Ayar Labs. These companies don't pick small suppliers. They pick standards. And the standard increasingly has $SIVE inside it. $SIVE $NVDA $GFS
As I noted in earlier research, copper is hitting a wall. This Ayar Labs raise just confirms it.. When both $NVDA and $AMD back an optical interconnect company with $500M, they’re admitting the electrical link between chips is now the bottleneck. Power per bit matters more than ever and copper can’t scale efficiently anymore. To me this means CPO is not optional. That pushes real demand into $AXTI (InP), $TSEM (SiPh foundry), $BESIY (hybrid bonding) and $AEHR / $FORM (test). Bonus: $SLOIF / $SLOIY hasn’t moved like the flashy names because it’s buried under RF/auto noise. But if CPO scales, Photonics-SOI becomes a structural demand driver.
News
Ayar Labs raises $500M at a $3.75B valuation
Ayar Labs is a silicon photonics company developing optical I/O ('co-packaged optics') chiplets that replace electrical interconnects with light, enabling far higher bandwidth and lower power for AI and high-performance computing systems.
Polls
Will co-packaged optics ship in mainstream AI servers by 2028?
