News: Optoelectronics
10 September 2026
Ayar Labs expands 2026 funding to $650m to scale manufacturing-ready CPO for AI scale-up beyond rack
Silicon photonics-based chip-to-chip optical connectivity firm Ayar Labs of San Jose, CA, USA — which is pioneering co-packaged optics (CPO) for AI scale-up — has secured an additional $150m in funding, bringing its total primary capital raised in 2026 to $650m. Separately, it discloses that Wiwynn made a strategic investment earlier this year. Wiwynn, a cloud IT and infrastructure provider for data centers, joins a growing group of strategic backers that includes Alchip, AMD, Intel, MediaTek, and NVIDIA.
The new capital will support Ayar Labs’ continued transition to high-volume manufacturing, including investments in product development, validation, scaling the manufacturing ecosystem, and opening a new Bengaluru Design Center. The firm says that it continues to establish deep integration across the semiconductor manufacturing and engineering ecosystem to deliver the highest-performing and manufacturing-ready CPO solution for AI scale-up.
“Copper interconnect is becoming the limiting factor for AI scale-up,” notes CEO & co-founder Mark Wade. “This funding allows us to move faster on manufacturing-ready co-packaged optics at scale. We’re deepening our work across the foundry and packaging ecosystem and growing our engineering capacity to support customer programs worldwide.”
As AI systems scale from single accelerators to multi-rack architectures, performance is increasingly restricted by the power and physical constraints of electrical I/O. Ayar Labs says that its CPO solutions bring high-bandwidth, energy-efficient connectivity closer to compute, enabling system architects to extend AI scale-up while reducing the power and complexity that comes with copper interconnects.
“Co-packaged optics is a foundational technology for the next generation of AI and cloud data centers,” says William Lin, president & CEO of Wiwynn. “Through our collaboration and investment with Ayar Labs, we see a clear path to new architectures that reduce the power and complexity limits of copper interconnects, powering rack-scale deployment for the next wave of hyperscale AI data centers.”
As part of its growth strategy, Ayar Labs is expanding its worldwide engineering presence with a new Bengaluru Design Center. This engineering hub will complement existing teams in the USA and Hsinchu, Taiwan. The firm’s VP of silicon engineering Sankara Venkateswaran, hired earlier in 2026, is overseeing the new office, with senior director of engineering Arun Balachandar serving as site lead. The new India Design Center team will build end-to-end engineering capabilities across silicon product development.
“Our new Bengaluru Design Center supports our transition from technology development to commercialization and production,” says Venkateswaran. “As customer demand and the complexity of our product roadmap increase, expanding our global engineering capacity will help us execute faster, support multiple development programs, and collaborate more closely with partners and customers across the region.”
Ayar Labs is rapidly hiring to meet the immediate demand for co-packaged optics. A complete list of open roles in San Jose, Hsinchu and Bengaluru can be seen at ayarlabs.com/careers.
Ayar Labs joins NVIDIA NVLink Fusion ecosystem to bring CPO to rack-scale AI infrastructure
Ayar Labs and Wiwynn partner on CPO for rack-scale AI systems
