Co-packaged optics and optical I/O companies
Co-packaged optics put the optical engines on the switch or XPU package instead of in pluggable cages. Broadcom ships Tomahawk 6 Davisson at 102.4 Tb/s, NVIDIA builds CPO into its Quantum-X and Spectrum-X Photonics switches, and optical I/O chiplets run from Ayar Labs at 8 Tb/s to Lightmatter at 32 to 114 Tb/s.
| Speeds | Form factors | Lasers | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broadcom | DSP & chips | 800G, 1.6T; 400G/lane Taurus DSP for 3.2T (OFC 2026) | DSP and laser chips; CPO switch (Tomahawk 6 Davisson, 102.4 Tb/s) | 200G VCSEL, 200G EML, 400G EML | Yes | NASDAQ: AVGO | 2026-11-11 |
| Gigalight | Module maker | 100G, 200G, 400G, 800G, 1.6T; 3.2T on roadmap | QSFP-DD, OSFP; NPO and CPO engines | — | Yes | — | 2026-11-11 |
| Marvell | DSP & chips | 800G, 1.6T (Ara 3 nm PAM4 DSP) | PAM4 and coherent DSP chips; COLORZ 800 pluggable module | — | — | NASDAQ: MRVL | 2026-11-11 |
| NVIDIA (LinkX) | Network OEM | 400G, 800G, 1.6T; 200G PAM4 lanes | OSFP (IHS and RHS), QSFP-DD, QSFP112 | — | Yes | NASDAQ: NVDA | 2026-11-11 |
| TFC Optical Communication | Lasers & components | 800G and 1.6T optical engines | — | — | — | — | 2026-11-11 |
| Ayar Labs | Optical I/O & CPO | 8 Tb/s aggregate TeraPHY UCIe optical I/O chiplet | UCIe optical chiplet | SuperNova external CW-WDM light source (16 wavelengths) | Yes | — | 2026-11-11 |
| Celestial AI | Optical I/O & CPO | 16 Tb/s per first-generation Photonic Fabric chiplet | Optical I/O chiplet, 3D co-packaged with XPUs and switches | — | — | Private until acquired by Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) | 2026-11-11 |
| Lightmatter | Optical I/O & CPO | L200 32 Tb/s and L200X 64 Tb/s total Tx+Rx; M1000 114 Tb/s total optical bandwidth | 3D co-packaged optics engine; photonic interposer | — | Yes | — | 2026-11-11 |
| Ranovus | Optical I/O & CPO | 12.8 Tb/s (Odin 128 engine) | Optical engines for CPO and NPO | Quantum dot and quantum well lasers (proprietary) | — | — | 2026-11-11 |
Switch CPO and optical I/O are different buys
How we sourceSwitch CPO: scale-out
Switch CPO replaces front-panel pluggables on a network switch. NVIDIA rates its CPO at 5x better power efficiency than off-the-shelf transceivers. You buy it as a switch from the silicon vendor, so the shortlist is short: Broadcom and NVIDIA.
Optical I/O: scale-up
Optical I/O chiplets sit beside a GPU or accelerator and replace copper between packages. Celestial AI put 16 Tb/s in its first Photonic Fabric chiplet before Marvell bought it, and Ranovus sells a 12.8 Tb/s Odin engine. These are design-in decisions for chip teams.
The supply chain behind both
CPO still needs lasers and fiber attach. Lumentum builds ultra-high-power CW lasers for CPO, Ayar Labs sells the SuperNova external light source, and TFC calls itself a core CPO partner of a world-leading AI computing provider.