News
MediaTek invests 90 million USD in silicon photonics startup Ayar Labs
Monday, March 2, 2026 at 12:23 PM
MediaTek, through its subsidiary Digimoc Holdings Limited, has invested approximately $90 million to acquire a 2.4% stake in US-based silicon photonics startup Ayar Labs. Ayar Labs, which is also backed by NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and TSMC, plans to open an office in Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 2025 and has established strategic partnerships with Creative Labs and KY Semiconductor for application-specific chip development.
Context
MediaTek has invested $90 million to acquire a 2.4% stake in Ayar Labs, a U.S. silicon photonics leader, through its subsidiary Digimoc Holdings. This strategic move places MediaTek alongside an elite group of existing investors including Nvidia, AMD, and Intel, underscoring the industry-wide shift toward optical interconnects to resolve critical AI data bottlenecks. The investment is timely as Ayar Labs prepares to open a new office in Hsinchu in 2025 to deepen its presence within the Taiwan semiconductor ecosystem.
Ayar Labs is already deeply integrated into the TSMC supply chain via VentureTech Alliance and maintains strategic partnerships with design firms like Creative Labs. By backing this technology, MediaTek secures vital access to co-packaged optics solutions that replace traditional copper wiring with high-speed light communication. This ensures the company can meet the massive bandwidth and power-efficiency demands of next-generation AI infrastructure, positioning it to compete more aggressively in the high-performance computing and data center markets.
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