Ayar Labs $500M Series E for CPO Mass Production

Funding Details

• $500M Series E — led by Neuberger Berman
• Investors include MediaTek and Nvidia (Nvidia first invested 2022)
• Largest funding round in silicon photonics startup history

Technical Capabilities

• TeraPHY chiplets deliver optical chip-to-chip communications
• 8 Tbps bandwidth per chiplet at 10 nanosecond latency
• Reference design with 8 next-gen TeraPHY chiplets supports 200+ Tbps aggregate bandwidth per package
• That's ~5x the bandwidth of Nvidia's Rubin GPUs
• Target: 10,000 GPU dies connected in a scale-up domain at ~100kW rack power

Production & Partnerships

• Collaborating with GUC (Global Unichip Corp) and Alchip on reference designs
• New office in Hsinchu, Taiwan — close to TSMC
• Production samples expected 2026
• Built on TSMC COUPE platform

Market Significance

• Validates CPO as the path forward for AI data center interconnects
• Nvidia backing signals CPO will be in next-gen GPU platforms
• 200 Tbps/package could transform AI cluster architecture — eliminates copper bottleneck

Source: Ayar Labs raises $500M — The Register, March 2026