Ayar Labs expands leadership team and opens office in Taiwan
The company has also doubled the size of its headquarters in San Jose, and says the expansion comes at an important time, just months after the announcement of its UCIe optical chiplet for AI infrastructure
Ayar Labs, a company focusing on co-packaged optics (CPO) for large-scale AI workloads, has announced that Vivek Khanzodé is joining the company as vice president of engineering. To support its efforts in high-volume manufacturing and CPO adoption, the company has also announced the opening of a new office in Taiwan and that it has doubled the size of its San Jose headquarters. These milestones align with Ayar Labs’ mission of transforming AI connectivity with optical interconnects.
“As the industry accelerates its shift toward CPO solutions, we are taking decisive steps to ensure Ayar Labs leads this market transition,” said Mark Wade, Ayar Labs’ co-founder and CEO. “Expanding in Taiwan places us at the centre of the global semiconductor ecosystem, allowing us to access world-class talent and deepen partnerships with key industry players. Combined with the expertise of leaders like Vivek, we are ready to deliver the solutions customers need to revolutionise next-generation AI infrastructure.”
Khanzodé joins from Marvell Technology, Inc., where he led the company’s pre- and post-silicon validation for products that shipped in the hundreds of millions annually. Ayar Labs says that Khanzodé’s more than 30 years of engineering leadership experience, as well as his expertise in scaling complex semiconductor products, will be instrumental as the company builds toward high-volume manufacturing and commercial adoption.
In addition, the new office in Hsinchu, Taiwan, aims to play a critical role in advanced chip manufacturing, enabling Ayar Labs to closely collaborate with the local Taiwan semiconductor ecosystem and leverage the region’s exceptional talent pool. Scott Clark, who joined as vice president of manufacturing & operations nearly three years ago, will expand his role to include oversight of the company’s operations in Taiwan.
According to Ayar Labs, the expansion of the leadership team and global presence comes at a momentous time for the company, which earlier this year unveiled what it describes as an industry-first UCIe optical interconnect chiplet for CPO. This product aims to eliminate data bottlenecks by maximising AI infrastructure performance and efficiency while reducing latency and power consumption. In addition, Ayar Labs secured $155 million in Series D funding last year from AMD, Intel Capital, NVIDIA, and others to address the need for scalable, cost-effective AI infrastructure.
