Ayar Labs

AI scale-up has run into a physical wall: the rack itself. Training and inference now lean on thousands of accelerators behaving as one system. Copper struggles to carry that traffic any real distance, burning power and losing signal integrity the farther it goes. That traps high-performance scale-up inside a single rack. In our latest AI infrastructure requirements conversation, Ayar Labs makes the case for co-packaged optics as the way past that wall. Its TeraPHY optical engine brings light directly into the compute or switch package, paired with a SuperNova external light source built for data center reliability. The payoff: up to 10x more bandwidth, 10x lower latency, and three to five times better power efficiency than copper and pluggable optics. That reach rewrites the floor plan. Operators can spread compute across multiple 100 kW racks and still run them as one scale-up domain, easing thermal concentration and opening up power and cooling decisions. Ayar Labs contends that the deeper win is manufacturability. TeraPHY is built on silicon photonics and standard CMOS, with a UCIe chiplet interface and a protocol-agnostic design spanning UALink, PCIe, NVLink and ESUN. The signal here: optics is moving from component upgrade to the foundation of the AI fabric. Full Q&A: https://lnkd.in/erdnfCFZ #CoPackagedOptics #AIInfrastructure

As silicon photonics moves toward volume production, designing the photonic integrated circuit is only part of the challenge. Designs become even more complex once the optical engine is tied to a specific foundry process, packaging strategy, and system architecture. "Much of the workflow of designing electro-optical devices is foundry-specific, so your workflow depends on which foundries you work with and the architecture you have," said Vishal C., Director of Product Management at Ayar Labs. For us, that architecture is an electronics chip hybrid-bonded onto a photonic chip, then co-packaged alongside the GPU or switch. Full article from Semiconductor Engineering in the comments. #optical #photonics #semiconductor #AI #HPC #CPO

Our CFO, Lisa Dulchinos, is joining the panel at GSA Women's Leadership Initiative's Lunch and Learn this Friday! We are proud to have her represent Ayar Labs and champion women's leadership in semiconductors. #WLI #semiconductor #technology #womeninleadership #CPO

CPO overcomes the limitations of traditional copper and pluggable optics by enabling thousands of GPUs to operate as a single unified system with the bandwidth and latency needed for hyperscale AI infrastructure. Ayar Labs’ CPO solution offers: ⚡ 20x improvement for next-gen AI models -> better tokens per dollar/watt ⚡ 10x lower latency ⚡ 3-5x more power efficient #optical #photonics #semiconductor #AI #HPC #CPO

🌠 It's Visibility Series Friday! 🌠 Today we're spotlighting Lisa Dulchinos, CFO of Ayar Labs! ⭐Tell us about yourself As CFO at Ayar Labs, I’m focused on building an organization that can support the company through its next phase of growth and public readiness. My career has centered on scaling companies, developing the financial infrastructure, teams, and discipline needed to move from innovation to commercial success and investor confidence. At Ayar Labs, I’ve helped guide the transition from R&D to production, scaling the team from 20 to 200 employees and supporting multiple funding rounds totaling nearly $1B over almost a decade. I’ve led organizations through pivotal moments, including public readiness, acquisitions, and sustained growth at companies such as Adept Technology and Penguin Computing. I bring financial rigor and a strong focus on people development to everything I do. Outside of work, I’m a proud mother of five, four boys and one girl, which has shaped how I think about leadership, resilience, and the importance of setting an example for the next generation. ⭐What excites you most about your work? I’m motivated by the impact of what we’re building. Our technology is foundational to enabling the next generation of AI, and it’s exciting to be part of something so critical at such a pivotal time. I’m also passionate about being a visible example for women in this industry. The more representation we have at the leadership level, the more we expand what the next generation believes is possible. ⭐Who has inspired you? I’ve had many strong male mentors throughout my career, but I’m especially inspired by leaders like Lisa Su and Jean Hu at AMD. Seeing two women at the highest levels of a top-tier semiconductor company is both powerful and motivating. Thank you for sharing with us, Lisa! Learn more about WLI at the link: https://hubs.la/Q04p5pJK0 #WLI #leadership #semiconductor

As AI scale-up accelerates, GPU counts and interconnect bandwidth keep climbing, and copper is running out of room. Optical scale-up is now practical, thanks to a semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem that has matured around CPO. Ayar Labs is building the optical engines making that shift real, letting future AI systems span multiple racks while behaving as a single computing domain. Read more from IEEE Spectrum in the comments. #optical #photonics #semiconductor #AI #HPC #CPO

When key figures all point to the same bottleneck, it's worth paying attention. Ayar Labs joining the NVIDIA NVLink Fusion ecosystem brings CPO to rack-scale AI infrastructure. This enables flexible system architectures and efficient AI scaling beyond the limits of copper. Full press release in comments. #NVLinkFusion #optical #photonics #semiconductor #AI #HPC #CPO

🌠 It's Visibility Series Friday! 🌠 Today we're getting to know Ann Harren, Manager, Product Reliability Engineering at Ayar Labs! ⭐Tell us about yourself I’m the manager of our laser module reliability group at Ayar Labs. I have a PhD from the electrical engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where I developed electronic beam-steering for vertical cavity surface emitting lasers. I have worked in engineering at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Avago Technologies /Broadcom, and Lumentum. I met my husband at a summer internship at IBM Watson Research Center while we both were in graduate school. We now have two teenagers and a very busy life. Outside of work, I enjoy traveling, attending concerts, and hosting board game parties at our house. Most mornings, you can find me walking our slightly neurotic but generally loveable rescue dog. ⭐What excites you most about your work? What excites me most about reliability engineering is the combination of technical depth and real-world impact. I enjoy that the role spans everything from hands-on troubleshooting and failure analysis to modeling, automation, and cross-functional problem solving. It keeps the work dynamic and constantly challenging. Ultimately, what’s most rewarding is knowing that this work directly contributes to delivering a robust, reliable product. It’s a role where both technical rigor and collaboration really matter, and I find that combination energizing. ⭐Who has inspired you? I have been very fortunate to have many mentors and allies throughout my career. In middle school, a physicist from Fermilab, Regina Rameika, presented at a STEM career event, which really set me on the path of physics and engineering. My undergraduate advisor, Professor Kevin Kim, started encouraging me to pursue my PhD before I was convinced that I would survive the freshman EE introductory class, and later, he invited me to assist with a project in his lab. I am very grateful to the many mentors and hiring managers from my internship positions. Specifically, the Zurich IBM group with Thomas Morf and Martin Schmatz spent a lot of time talking me into graduate school. (And a shout-out to my officemate, Bert, at IBM Burlington who encouraged me to talk to the Zurich team about the possibility of an internship next summer!) My PhD advisor, Professor Kent Choquette, was always very supportive, and I felt like he and my entire graduate committee always had my back. This includes Professor Jennifer Bernhard and Professor Scott Carney who both gave me lots of great advice and support. More recently, my manager at Broadcom, Laura Giovane, acted as a gold standard for technical leads. Now at Ayar Labs, I feel very fortunate to have a chance to learn from many great women including Jie Xue who is always lifting-up those around her. Learn more about WLI at the link: https://hubs.la/Q04lc81f0 #WLI #leadership #semiconductor

Ayar Labs' first AI Hackathon is in the books! Teams competed to build AI-powered tools that solve real problems, improve workflows, and unlock new ways of working. After a showcase of creativity and some seriously impressive builds, winners were crowned at a company-wide ice cream social to kick off summer. Great builds. Great people. Great ice cream.

Our SuperNova external light source is built for the realities of hyperscale. It is validated in a liquid-cooled, high-density ELSFP board design, in collaboration with Wiwynn, that meets the thermal, mechanical, and vibration demands. As bandwidth requirements push past the limits of air cooling, liquid cooling brings coolant closer to the source. This "belly-to-belly" cold plate design supports OIF-spec high-power ELSFP with full serviceability, providing a deployment-ready blueprint for high-density CPO systems. Read more on Semiconductor Engineering in the comments. #optical #photonics #semiconductor #AI #HPC #CPO