Market chatter says AMD is teaming up with GlobalFoundries to move into silicon photonics, and traders have named these four targets

The AI chip race is moving beyond pure compute power itself and into a “transport war” inside data centers. According to reports from foreign media, AMD is planning to partner with GlobalFoundries to develop a co-packaged optics (Co-Packaged Optics, CPO) solution for the next-generation Instinct MI500 AI accelerator. By integrating optical components more tightly into the packaging architecture, it aims to reduce bottlenecks of traditional copper-wire interconnects in bandwidth, power consumption, and latency.

If the report is true, this is not only an important upgrade by AMD to its AI infrastructure, but also means that silicon photonics has become the core battleground in the next round of data-center competition between AMD and NVIDIA.

AMD MI500 CPO architecture handled by GlobalFoundries

So-called CPO, simply put, is to co-package the optical engine with the GPU, switch, or other high-performance computing components at extremely short distances, shortening the transmission path of high-speed data and telecom signals. The purpose is to replace some high-energy-consumption, distance-limited copper connections with light, improving bandwidth density, power consumption performance, and latency efficiency in interconnects within racks, between racks, and across even larger-scale interconnections in data centers.

In recent years, GlobalFoundries has been actively betting on a silicon photonics platform, and the official side has also clearly positioned it as a key technology to meet the needs for high-speed, low-power connectivity in data centers.

The report states that for the MI500 CPO architecture AMD is planning this time, GlobalFoundries will be responsible for manufacturing the photonic integrated circuits (PICs), while packaging will be handled by ASE, which is under ASE Group. This supply-chain arrangement suggests that AMD may want to separate advanced process computing chips from optical interconnect modules—so different suppliers each handle the parts they are best at—further strengthening the overall packaging and interconnect performance of the AI accelerator.

2025 AMD acquisition of silicon-photonics startup Enosemi

In fact, AMD has already been paving the way for this step in recent years. In 2025, the company acquired the silicon-photonics startup Enosemi and explicitly said the move is to accelerate co-packaged optics innovation. At the time, AMD also said that Enosemi was already its external photonics development partner; after the acquisition, it is expected to integrate related capabilities more deeply into its own AI system roadmap. In other words, if MI500 ultimately does adopt CPO, it is more like an extension of AMD’s optical interconnect buildup over the past year or more, rather than a sudden idea.

Based on the official roadmap, AMD has confirmed that Instinct MI500 will be launched in 2027, using the CDNA 6 architecture, advanced 2-nanometer process technology, and HBM4E memory. It also claims that, compared with the MI300X launched in 2023, the MI500 series targets up to a 1000x improvement in AI performance. This means AMD’s positioning for MI500 is not just a successor to the MI400 line, but a flagship weapon for the next wave of AI data-center platforms.

At a system level of this scale, the importance of packaging and interconnects is no less than that of a single chip itself—so CPO has therefore become a technology option of major strategic significance.

Which companies benefit from AMD MI500? Traders name these four tickers

In addition, from the supply-chain perspective, trader Serenity also offered another more speculative line of thinking. He pointed out that if AMD really pushes forward with the MI500 co-packaged optics solution along GlobalFoundries’ silicon photonics ecosystem, then the market would not only look at AMD and GlobalFoundries themselves, but may also turn its attention to external laser light-source suppliers.

Because in a CPO/silicon-photonics architecture, optical signals do not appear out of thin air—the system still needs a stable external laser light source as a “light engine,” and then the photonic chip handles modulation, transmission, and switching of signals.

The tickers Serenity mentioned in the article are, respectively, AMD, GFS, SIVE, and LITE. Among them, AMD is Advanced Micro Devices; GFS is the U.S. foundry GlobalFoundries; SIVE refers to the Swedish listed company Sivers Semiconductors, whose Sivers Photonics focuses on high-power DFB lasers and laser arrays; and LITE is Lumentum, a U.S.-listed company that is a global supplier of major optical communications and laser component technologies.

Sivers’ official website explicitly states that the company’s products include high-power DFB lasers and laser arrays for use by AI data centers and HPC. Lumentum, meanwhile, announced as early as 2022 that it would cooperate with Ayar Labs to supply external laser light sources that comply with the CW-WDM MSA standard for co-packaged optics interconnect solutions.

Serenity’s bullish logic on Sivers is that if the CPO route ultimately adopted by AMD’s MI500 needs to introduce external laser arrays that can be manufactured at scale, then companies like Sivers—specializing in laser arrays and already having a track record in the CPO ecosystem—could stand to benefit.

Sivers previously already won orders from Ayar Labs to develop next-generation laser arrays for its optical I/O solutions, and the details of the collaboration have clearly mentioned mass-production pricing and preparations for future large-scale manufacturing. This is also why Serenity believes that if Sivers successfully gets into the AMD MI500 supply chain in the future, the market may not yet have fully reflected the potential value of those order contracts.

On X, user @AntonLaVay pointed out that in recent years, Sivers has not only started evaluating a dual listing on Nasdaq, but its management power center has also clearly shifted toward the U.S. team. For a Swedish mid-sized tech company, it is quite rare for both the chairman and the CEO to be taken over by Americans at the same time; this may imply the company is preparing for a U.S. acquisition or further U.S.-ization. If this trend continues, from the market’s perspective on Sivers, it may not just be a CPO theme beneficiary stock, but rather a strategic asset with deeper potential embedded in the U.S.-based AI supply chain.

However, it’s still worth emphasizing that Serenity’s reasoning is currently “supply-chain imagination,” not a partnership list that has been confirmed or verified by AMD or GlobalFoundries. At this stage, what can be confirmed is that an external laser light source is indeed an important part of the CPO ecosystem, and both Lumentum and Sivers have already appeared in relevant optical interconnect and CW-WDM MSA ecosystems. But which laser supplier AMD MI500 will ultimately adopt, whether it will use multiple-source procurement, and the actual mass-production timeline and scale still require more official information to be disclosed later.

This article Market rumors that AMD teams up with GlobalFoundries to move into silicon photonics; traders name these four tickers The earliest appearance is in Chain News ABMedia.