800G/1.6T Silicon Photonics & Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) — optical transceiver / CPO module

800G/1.6T Silicon Photonics & Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) — optical transceiver / CPO module

Companies committing: Astera Labs, Ayar Labs, Celestica, Semtech, Credo Technology, Lumentum Holdings Inc.

Opportunity: Pluggable copper SerDes is at its reach limit for rack-scale GPU fabrics; 800G→1.6T and CPO are the only paths to keep up with NVLink/UALink rack densities.

Heavy hire across the optics stack — PIC firmware, packaging, test, CPO validation — from both retimer incumbents (Astera, Credo, Semtech) and the AI-photonics native (Ayar). Optics has shifted from 'pluggable upgrade' to a packaging+firmware co-design problem; bottleneck is talent in EIC/PIC validation and thermal-mechanical photonic packaging.