AI supply-chain thesis — mapping bottlenecks, focus companies, and supply-chain exposure for investors.
**Bottleneck theme:** Photonics / CPO
**Focus:** $POET — POET TECHNOLOGIES INC.
POET is the photonic-integrated CPO engine outlier — a small-cap pure-play building hybrid PIC/EIC light engines on a fab-friendly, dielectric-waveguide platform that targets 800G/1.6T/3.2T optical I/O, including the co-packaged optics socket. Where Coherent ($COHR) and Lumentum ($LITE) bring scale and incumbent EML supply, POET's pitch is wafer-scale assembly: lasers, modulators, drivers, and SOAs co-packaged into a single optical engine that solves both yield and power-density problems for hyperscaler switch ASICs and AI accelerator I/O.
The bull case rests on design wins translating into volume — partnerships with Mitsubishi Electric (transmit modules), Foxconn Interconnect (test/assembly), and Sanmina (manufacturing) have moved the company from concept to qualification. The bear case is execution and time: CPO volume socket selection at NVIDIA, Broadcom, and Marvell happens once, and a single mis-step pushes POET out of the Rubin/Kyber generation entirely. Treat as a high-beta, optionality-style overlay on the Photonics / CPO theme; size accordingly.
Silicon Photonics — Photonic integrated circuits fabricated on silicon and silicon-on-insulator substrates — modulators, photodetectors, waveguides, grating couplers — used mainly in optical transceivers for data-center and telecom interconnects, with growing roles in co-packaged optics, LiDAR, and biosensing.
