POET Technologies (NASDAQ: POET) and Lumilens announced a strategic supply and joint development agreement to advance wafer-level photonic integration for next-generation AI optical networks using an Electrical-Optical Interposer (EOI) platform.Lumilens placed an initial $50 million purchase order for EOI-based engines, with the relationship structured to potentially exceed $500 million in cumulative purchases over five years. POET granted Lumilens a warrant for up to 22,921,408 shares at $8.25, partially exercisable immediately and largely tied to future purchases. The roadmap covers 800G/1.6T pluggables, Near-Package Optics, and Co-Packaged Optics, with engineering samples targeted for late 2026 and production ramp in 2027, subject to successful development, qualification, and manufacturing scale-up.

Lumilens Inc., a provider of optical networking chips for artificial intelligence clusters, launched today with $900 million in funding. The company raised the bulk of the capital, $700 million, through a Series C round that valued it at $5.51 billion. Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech, Seligman Ventures and Spark Capital jointly led the investment. They were joined by more than a dozen others including Qualcomm Inc. Lumilens is led by co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Ankur Singla. His previous two networking startups, Contrail Systems Inc. and Volterra Inc., were sold for a combined $676 million. Two-year-old Lumilens says that it has already received billions of dollars worth of chip orders. Data center operators historically used copper wires to move data between processors. Lumilens’ chips make it possible to replace copper interconnects with faster fiber-optic cabling. The company makes optical chips for two use cases: scale-up and scale-out networking. The former term describes technology that links together chips in a single rack, while scale-out networks connect different racks. Lumilens is targeting the scale-up market with two product families. The first is a co-packaged optics, or CPO, chip series that can be integrated directly into graphics processing units. The company says...

Lumilens emerged from stealth at a $5.51 billion valuation. POET Technologies (POET) signed in May to build its optical engines, a $50M order that can scale to $500M, with a warrant near 12% of POET's...

Press release from POET Technologies posted on May 15, 2026

By Lisa Thompson NASDAQ: POET READ THE FULL POET RESEARCH REPORT It has been a heck of a ride since early April when we did our last update. The stock was at $6.11 then, and hit an intraday high of $2...

POET Technologies (NASDAQ: POET) reported Q1 2026 revenue of $503,389, up from $166,760 a year earlier, and a net loss of $12.3 million, or ($0.08) per share. Q1 results included $4.5 million in R&D, $3.4 million in stock-based compensation and $1.0 million in depreciation.POET entered a supply agreement with Lumilens, including an initial $50 million purchase order for EOI-based engines, with a framework that could reach $500+ million over five years. The company also announced collaborations with LITEON and Lessengers and plans to relocate its headquarters to the U.S.

Frontier Enterprise coverage shows Lumilens raising more than $700 million at a $5.51 billion valuation after its optical interconnect product moved into a hyperscaler’s production AI data centres.

A $400m raise and a $50m Lumilens order position POET's optical interposer at AI infrastructure's next bottleneck: the photon.

Curate Feeds | Make Collections | Customize Email Briefs

Curate Feeds | Make Collections | Customize Email Briefs

Curate Feeds | Make Collections | Customize Email Briefs

Mayfield announced that early-stage investor and company builder Adit Singh has joined the firm as a partner to expand its focus on AI infrastructure at inception. Singh will back technical founders in AI hardware and software infrastructure, cybersecurity, and physical AI as part of Mayfield’s $3 billion AI investment strategy.Mayfield highlighted its history of investing in foundational technologies, including NUVIA and AI infrastructure unicorns Lumilens, SambaNova Systems, Frore Systems, and Upscale AI. With 70% of investments starting at inception, the firm positions itself as a first institutional partner providing company-building support and follow-on capital.Singh previously held investing roles at Cota Capital, Neotribe Ventures, and Foundation Capital, and was involved with four IPOs and four acquisitions, including Cerebras (NASDAQ: CBRS) and Seraphic. His operating background includes co-founding Bitsplay Systems and serving as the first product manager at Enphase Energy (NASDAQ: ENPH).

Lumilens raised over $700 million for AI optical links, while customer identity, shipment volumes and contract economics remain undisclosed.