News Article

GF secures $300M to advance SiPh

Wednesday 5th August 2026

The funding will accelerate next-generation silicon photonics, advanced packaging and co-packaged optics for AI infrastructure.

GlobalFoundries (GF) has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for a proposed $300 million CHIPS Research and Development award to accelerate next-generation silicon photonics technologies for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.

The funding is expected to support the development of advanced optical materials, silicon photonics wafer technologies and advanced packaging capabilities, including 3D hybrid bonding, to enable the deployment of near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO).

The programme builds on GF's recently introduced SCALE™ (Silicon Photonics Co-Packaged Advanced Light Engine) platform, which targets 400Gb/s optical performance and a fivefold improvement in energy efficiency over current-generation implementations.

The work will leverage GF's manufacturing facilities in Malta, New York, and Burlington, Vermont, supporting a U.S.-based path to high-volume silicon photonics manufacturing.

"Silicon photonics is essential to AI infrastructure," said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries. "GlobalFoundries has spent more than a decade building the technology, footprint and ecosystem to lead this transition, and we have the proven manufacturing foundation to scale it."

Gregg Bartlett, Chief Technology Officer at GlobalFoundries, said the company is combining its qualified portfolio of photonic devices with proven 3D hybrid bonding and advanced packaging technologies to bring near-packaged and co-packaged optics into high-volume production.

The announcement received support from industry leaders including AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Corning, Lumentum, Marvell, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Qualcomm, highlighting the growing importance of silicon photonics and optical interconnects in next-generation AI infrastructure.

GF secures $300M to advance SiPh

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