Nicholas Mugalli
Institutional TMT & Macro Research, AI/Semiconductors/Policy
POET's new supply and joint development deal with Lumilens, a $50 million initial order for optical engines and potentially $500 million over five years, places it at the next AI bottleneck. As GPU clusters scale to hundreds of thousands of chips, moving data between them at the speed compute requires becomes the constraint. Copper doesn't get there and photonics does, and POET's optical engine platform sits exactly at that intersection. x.comÂ
POET Technologies has no moat and is priced out after Marvell canceled every order tied to Celestial AI, including 2023 production orders, citing alleged confidentiality breaches. In semiconductors customer concentration is existential, so the 40% drop prices contagion risk as other customers may audit their own agreements. @aleabitoreddit expects Marvell to buy lasers directly from Coherent, Sivers or Lumentum. POET says it still serves other customers, and the breach remains alleged. x.com x.comÂ
POET's deal with Lumilens is a $500M validation that could move it from lab tech to commercial scale. The supply and joint development agreement starts with a $50M order for optical engines and could scale to $500M over five years, with samples in late 2026 and volume production in 2027. Its optical interposer integrates electronics and photonics in one chip-scale package, beating power-hungry pluggables. 2026 should be the year of validation, 2027 the year of revenue. x.comÂ
A potential Lumentum acquisition could let Marvell pair custom AI chips with the optical infrastructure connecting them. Following Celestial AI, it could become one of the few companies offering both, moving toward an AI-focused version of Broadcom; financing a deal this large remains a major concern. x.comÂ
POET Technologies' Lumilens deal looks weak because Lumilens lacks the cash to pay for its purchase orders and needs POET's stock to soar to cash out. Lumilens has nothing in an ultra-competitive optics sector with China. Claims of billions in orders are false; any Amazon order depends on executing several steps first, while Coherent sells about $5B of optics after 30+ years with access to fabs, lasers and ICs. x.com x.comÂ
POET's new Lumilens order could make it a pivotal niche bottleneck in AI infrastructure, with a wide moat. Lumilens placed a $50M initial order for POET's AI photonic optical engines, with a potential $500M over five years. If it truly works, it could be colossal, a Vertiv-like story developing in real time. The CEO, a former GlobalFoundries vice president with foundry-level manufacturing experience, could make POET central to the photonics industry. x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
POET Technologies has a path forward after Marvell in 800G/1.6T pluggables, now confirmed by a Lumilens supply and joint development deal. Lumilens placed an initial $50 million order for POET's Electrical-Optical Interposer engines, potentially exceeding $500 million over five years, with a roadmap through near-package and co-packaged optics. Engineering samples are targeted for late 2026 and production in 2027, subject to development and qualification. POET granted Lumilens warrants at $8.25. … Show more
POET Technologies' leadership is very good at hyping the stock, with two such cases in three weeks. It disclosed a new $5 million contract in the SEC filing that announced Marvell's order cancellation, and headlines ran with a "$500 million" Lumilens order that its own release put at $50 million with potential to scale. It is also oddly letting Lumilens buy deep in-the-money POET warrants at greatly reduced prices, not tied to a 30-day VWAP formula, unlike AMD's OpenAI deal. x.com x.com x.comÂ
POET is derisked by confirmation that its customer Lumilens is a large, well-funded hyperscaler supplier. Lumilens emerged from stealth at a $5.5B valuation after raising $700M, with a multi-billion-dollar customer agreement, confirming earlier mapping that it supplies a top-three hyperscaler. POET has a $50M Lumilens purchase order, scalable to $500M, plus contracts with Sivers, on top of its large balance sheet. Lumilens's rise is also great for optical valuations generally. x.comÂ
POET's new Lumilens partnership gives it real orders and firm footing in both indium phosphide and silicon photonics AI optics. The jointly developed electrical-optical interposer upgrades its silicon photonics compatibility, so it can build engines from either top-tier InP/EML parts or Lumilens silicon photonics chips on the same wafer-scale base. It is a measured hedge as InP supply tightens, without abandoning its core optical interposer for discrete InP engines. x.comÂ
POET Technologies' market cap rose $850M on a $50M deal, a jump that would require 1,700% margins on the product to justify. x.comÂ
Rising 1.6T switching demand favors optical suppliers, though their execution risks vary. Bank of America says the market could grow ~101% annually through 2030. Marvell's leading DSPs and Lumentum's supply-short 200G EML lasers are lowest risk; Applied Optoelectronics' capacity expansion and Fabrinet's customer concentration make them medium risk. Aeluma remains pre-commercial, while Lightwave Logic's polymer modulators are a high-risk moonshot despite its TSM partnership. x.comÂ
