Photonics stocks surge
- Small photonics and co‑packaged optics suppliers are seeing sudden investor interest tied to AI networking needs. - European names like $SIVE, $SOI, $IQE and $LPK have jumped more than 20% in some cases amid the rally. - Traders are pitching a full 7‑layer photonics stack to capture CPO demand linked to AMD, GFS and Ayar Labs (x.com, x.com).
Investors have piled into small photonics names in April as traders bet artificial intelligence data centers will need more optical links and less copper. (broadcom.com, ayarlabs.com) Co-packaged optics puts lasers and other light-moving parts next to the switching chip, cutting the electrical distance data has to travel inside a server. Broadcom says that design is aimed at bandwidth and power limits in next-generation systems. (broadcom.com, corning.com) That trade showed up in share prices this week. On April 22, Sivers Semiconductors traded around SEK 31 after a one-year gain of more than 800%, Soitec traded near €109 with a one-year gain above 130%, and IQE hit a fresh 52-week high around 72.8 pence before pulling back. (google.com, stockanalysis.com, ft.com) LPKF Laser & Electronics joined the move on April 21, when its own investor page showed the Xetra-listed stock at €14.50, up 17.89% in a day; by April 22, Investing.com showed it trading as high as €18.10 intraday. (lpkf.com, investing.com) The companies sit at different points in the same supply chain. Sivers has been pitching lasers and optical modules for artificial intelligence data centers, IQE makes compound semiconductor wafers, Soitec supplies engineered semiconductor substrates, and LPKF is pushing glass-based advanced packaging tools. (marketwatch.com, iqep.com, soitec.com, lpkf.com) The immediate spark is that optical interconnects are moving from lab promise toward production plans. Ayar Labs said on March 3 that it raised $500 million, bringing total funding to $870 million and a valuation of $3.75 billion, to scale high-volume production and test capacity for co-packaged optics. (ayarlabs.com, optica-opn.org) That funding round also tied the story more tightly to big chip names. Ayar Labs said AMD, Nvidia, MediaTek and Alchip joined the round, and Optica reported that AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and Nvidia had also backed the company in its December 2025 Series D. (ayarlabs.com, optica-opn.org) GlobalFoundries is part of the backdrop too. Ayar Labs and GlobalFoundries have described a long-term partnership on silicon photonics and optical input-output, and optics.org reported last month that Ayar’s TeraPHY optical chiplets are produced by GlobalFoundries. (ayarlabs.com, optics.org) Not everyone is treating the rally as settled fact. Google Finance surfaced an EFN report on April 22 saying photonics experts were questioning Sivers Semiconductors’ share surge, while MarketScreener listed a sell rating and fresh warnings after the stock’s March run. (google.com, marketscreener.com) The market is now trading a simple idea: if artificial intelligence clusters keep scaling, more of the bottleneck shifts from compute to connections, and light-based links start to look like the next picks-and-shovels trade. (broadcom.com, ayarlabs.com)
