Ayar Labs Raises Additional $150 Million, Bringing 2026 Funding to $650 Million for CPO Manufacturing Scale-Up

Ayar Labs, a leader in co-packaged optics solutions for AI scale-up, has secured an additional $150 million in funding, bringing its total primary capital raised in 2026 to $650 million, the company announced Thursday. The San Jose, California-based firm also disclosed that Wiwynn, a cloud IT and infrastructure provider for data centers, made a strategic investment earlier this year, joining an expanding group of backers that includes Alchip, AMD, Intel, MediaTek, and NVIDIA.

The fresh capital will support Ayar Labs' transition to high-volume manufacturing, including investments in product development, validation, scaling the manufacturing ecosystem, and the opening of a new design center in Bengaluru, India. The company said it is deepening integration across the semiconductor manufacturing and engineering ecosystem to deliver a manufacturing-ready CPO solution for AI scale-up.

The funding round underscores the growing urgency in the industry to address interconnect bottlenecks as AI systems expand from single accelerators to multi-rack architectures. Copper interconnect is increasingly becoming the limiting factor for AI scale-up, as performance is constrained by the power and physical limitations of electrical I/O. Ayar Labs' CPO solutions aim to bring high-bandwidth, energy-efficient connectivity closer to compute, enabling system architects to extend AI scale-up while reducing the power and complexity associated with copper interconnects.

"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."

Wiwynn's strategic investment reflects a broader recognition among data center infrastructure providers that co-packaged optics will play a foundational role in next-generation AI and cloud data centers. "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 global engineering footprint with a new Bengaluru Design Center, which will complement existing teams in the United States and Hsinchu, Taiwan. The company's vice president of silicon engineering, Sankara Venkateswaran, who was hired earlier this year, is overseeing the new office, with Arun Balachandar, senior director of engineering, serving as site lead. The 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 immediate demand for co-packaged optics, with open roles in San Jose, Hsinchu, and Bengaluru. Founded in 2015, the company is funded by domestic and international venture capital firms as well as strategic investors including AMD, Applied Ventures, MediaTek, NVIDIA, and VentureTech Alliance.