Insider Brief
- Ayar Labs, the leader in co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions for AI scale-up, secured an additional $150 million, bringing its total 2026 primary capital raised to $650 million, with Wiwynn disclosed as a strategic investor alongside Alchip, AMD, Intel, MediaTek, and NVIDIA.
- The funding supports Ayar Labs’ transition to high-volume manufacturing, including product development, validation, and a new Bengaluru Design Center led by VP Sankara Venkateswaran, complementing existing teams in the U.S. and Hsinchu, Taiwan.
- Ayar Labs’ CPO technology addresses power and physical constraints from copper interconnects as AI systems scale from single accelerators to multi-rack architectures, with CEO Mark Wade citing copper as an increasing bottleneck for AI scale-up.
PRESS RELEASE — Ayar Labs, the leader in co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions for AI scale-up, announced it has secured an additional $150 million in funding, bringing its total primary capital raised in 2026 to $650 million. Separately, the company disclosed 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.
This 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 company 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,” said Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. “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 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,” said William Lin, President and 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 United States and Hsinchu, Taiwan. The company’s vice president of silicon engineering, Sankara Venkateswaran, hired earlier this year, is overseeing the new office, with Arun Balachandar, senior director of engineering, 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,” said 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. Visit ayarlabs.com/careers to see a complete list of open roles in San Jose, Hsinchu, and Bengaluru.
About Ayar Labs
Ayar Labs is transforming AI infrastructure with the industry’s first proven co-packaged optics (CPO) solution manufactured in partnership with the world’s leading semiconductor ecosystem. By unlocking performance gains and reducing workload costs in power-constrained environments, Ayar Labs’ optical engines are key to enabling next-generation AI scale-up. Founded in 2015, Ayar Labs is funded by domestic and international venture capital firms, as well as strategic investors including AMD, Applied Ventures, MediaTek, NVIDIA, and VentureTech Alliance. For more information, visit www.ayarlabs.com.
Contacts
Kristine Raabe
press@ayarlabs.com
