Summary
Co-packaged optics (CPO) addresses bandwidth and latency bottlenecks by moving optical interfaces close to the electrical die, shortening high-speed electrical paths and enabling denser, low-power optical fabrics. This results in higher aggregate bandwidth per accelerator and low energy/bit — thereby aligning with the economics and engineering needs of AI clusters, which is where CPO is currently being positioned . CPO technology is still immature at the present time and the forecasts contained in this report paint different standards and product scenarios and how they will impact the the evolving CPO market
In 2020 CIR was the first analysis firm to publish a co-packaged optics (CPO) market report. We now think that by 2026, CPO will become a major interconnect technology in AI data centers throughout the world. In this report, we build a roadmap for the transition to CPO and show where business value will be created. Topics covered by this report include:
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How CPO products, technology and standards will evolve in the future
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CPO transition guidance for AI data center managers including case studies and profiles of CPO current trials
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Roadmaps of 30+ key CPO firms and how they identify their roadmaps with AI and rebrand CPO as primarily an AI platform. Also, a review of the most exciting CPO startups and where these firms see their competitive advantage
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CPO for on-rack, rack-to-rack and AI data center interconnection and the products that these applications inspire
A primary goal for this CIR report is to update CPO forecasts with breakouts by application, speed and technology, network segment and type of data center. Our new projections take into consideration how the rise of AI has impacted CPO technology and its market dynamics. CPO now promises a practical path to scaling multi-rack AI clusters. Meanwhile, major AI vendors, such as AI-accelerator suppliers and system integrators, are designing CPO solutions and positioning them for 2025–2026 deployments in AI data centers.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
E.1 Market Environment and Situations Influencing the Market
E.2 Potential CPO Benefits
E.3 Uncertainties Preventing a CPO Boom
E.3.1 Does AI Need CPO and is CPO Ready for AI?
E.4 Technical/Market Evolution of the CPO Market for AI Applications
E.4.1 Adventures in Cooling
E.4.2 CPO Test Equipment: Sales Prior to the CPO Market
E.4.3 Other Technical Issues
E.5 Why CPO is Likely to Succeed — At Least for Now
E.6 Summary of CPO Market Forecasts 2026-2034
Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Background to this Report
1.2 Goals and Scope of this Report
1.3 Plan of this Report
Chapter Two: Co-packaged Optics: A Technology, Components and Business Opportunity Evolving
2.1 CPO in Traditional AI Data Centers
2.2 CPO for Next-Gen AI Data Centers
2.2.1 CPO Data Rates
2.2.2 Thermal Management
2.2.3 Electrical Interfaces and Channel Loss
2.2.4 Optical Interfaces
2.2.5 Integration Strategies, Manufacturing and CPO
2.3 CPO-related Test Equipment
2.4 Optical Engines
2.4.1 The Broadcom and NVIDIA Approaches
2.5 Fiber, Connector and Couplers for CPO
2.5.1 Thoughts from Broadcom and NVIDIA
2.5.2 Vertical Coupling
2.6 Fiber Solutions for CPO
2.6.1 Multi-core fibers and Fiber Pitch Reduction
2.6.2 Reducing the Pitch
2.7 Lasers for CPO
2.7.1 External Lasers and ELSFP
2.7.2 Module-integrated lasers
Chapter Three: CPO Standards and Implications
3.1 OIF and the Emergence of Co-Packaged Optics
3.1.1 Framework IA (2022)
3.1.2 OIF standards 3.2T CPO Module
3.1.3 External Laser Small Form Pluggable ELSP IA (2023)
3.1.4 CEI-112G / CEI-224G Electrical Interfaces
3.1.5 IAs for CPO Management Interfaces
3.1.6 Future IAs of the CPO Kind
3.1.7 Telemetry and Management
3.2 CPO Standardization in China
3.3 UCIe and CPO
3.4 CPO and Ultra Ethernet
3.4.1 Ultra Ethernet
3.4.2 Advanced Photonics Coalition
Chapter Four: CPO Markets and Forecasts
4.1 Thoughts on the Growth and Size of the CPO Market
4.2 Organic Traffic Growth for CPO Impact on CPO Demand
4.2.1 What Video Taught Data Centers: Bandwidth and Latency
4.2.2 CPO Market by Size of Data Center
4.3 CPO and Hyperscale Data Centers
4.3.1 Hyperscale Data Center Evolution
4.3.2 A CPO Inflection Point by 2032: A Forecast
4.3.3 Penetration of CPO into Switches
4.3.4 Penetration of CPO into Data Servers
4.3.5 Impact on Fiber and Data Center Rack Design
4.3.6 Pricing of CPO Products
4.4 CPO and Conventional Data Centers: Prophesies
4.5 CPO and Edge Data Centers
4.5.1 CPO at the Edge
4.6 CPO Data Center Interconnection
4.6.1 Role of CPO in DCI
4.7 Non-AI Applications for CPO
4.7.1 High-Performance Computing
4.7.2 CPO’s Impact on IoT
4.7.3 CPO and Sensors
4.7.4 Disaggregated Compute Systems: Applications for CPO
Chapter Five: End-user Perspectives, Strategies and Guidance: Problems Still to Overcome ?
5.1 AI Exaggerates the Importance of CPO!
5.2 Stage One: The Path to CPO – NPO, LPO and “Real” CPO
5.3 NPO (Near-packaged Optics)
5.3.1 LPO (Linear Pluggable Optics)
5.4 Stage Two: Rebuilding the Infrastructure for CPO: Practical Considerations for Processes and Components
5.4.1 Availability of Commercial Component Choices
5.4.2 CPO and the Old Copper vs. Glass Debate
5.4.3 Cooling, Power and Sustainability
5.4.4 ELSFP and the CPO Supply Chain
5.5 Stage Three: Pilot Project, Plugfests and Demos
5.5.1 Multivendor Plugfests
5.5.2 Hyperscaler Internal Trials
5.5.3 Vendor Demos
Chapter Six: Profiles: Suppliers and Influencers
6.1 AMD (United States)
6.1.1 Acquisition of Enosemi
6.2 Ayar Labs (United States)
6.2.1 Product Evolution
6.2.2 Alchip Technologies/TSMC alliance
6.2.3 Partnership with Quantifi Photonics
6.2.4 Partnership with HPE
6.2.5 Ayar the AI Infrastructure
6.2.6 Financing and Collaborators
6.3 Broadcom (United States)
6.3.1 Emerging CPO Product Range
6.3.2 The Bailly Switch
6.3.3 Long-term CPO Strategy at Broadcom
6.4 Ciena/Nubis (United States)
6.4.1 Ciena’s Long-term Participation in the CPO Market
6.5 Cisco (United States)
6.6 Coherent (United States)
6.6.1 CPO Product Evolution
6.7 Corning (United States)
6.8 DuPont (United States)
6.9 Furukawa Electric (Japan)
6.10 Google (United States)
6.11 Hengtong Optic-Electric (China)
6.12 Huawei (China)
6.12.1 Huawei Thinking on CPO
6.13 IBM (United States)
6.13.1 IBM CPO-related Innovations in 2024-2025
6.14 Intel (United States)
6.14.1 First Bi-Directional Compute Interconnect
6.14.2 CPO and Multiwavelength Integrated Optics
6.14.3 The Future of CPO at Intel
6.15 Kyocera (Japan)
6.16 Lightmatter (United States)
6.17 Lumentum (United States)
6.17.1 CPO Related Activity
6.18 Marvell (United States)
6.18.1 CPO and the Marvell XPU Architecture
6.18.2 CPO and Marvell Switches
6.18.3 Acquisition of Celestial AI
6.19 Meta/Facebook (United States)
6.20 Microsoft (United States)
6.21 Micas Networks (United States)
6.22 Molex (United States)
6.23 NVIDIA (United States)
6.23.1 Silicon Photonics: Strengths and Architectures
6.23.2 The NVIDIA Switch Family
6.23.3 Emerging Markets for NVIDIA CPO Switches
6.24 POET Technologies (Canada)
6.24.1 The POET Interposer
6.24.2 Light Sources and Collaboration with Semtech and Sivers Semiconductors
6.24.3 Recent Alliance with Quantum Computing Inc. (QCI)
6.24.4 POET Products for AI Data Centers
6.24.5 Manufacturing and Foreign Subsidiaries
6.25 Quantifi (New Zealand)
6.26 Ranovus (Canada)
6.26.1 ODIN Optical Engine and its Versions
6.26.2 Collaborations with AMD
6.26.3 Collaborations with IBM
6.26.4 DARPA, Cerebras Systems and Ranovus
6.26.5 Alliance with Jabil
6.27 SABIC (Saudi Arabia)
6.27.1 EXTEM Resin
6.27.2 ULTEM Resin
6.28 Senko Advanced Components (United States)
6.28.1 Acquisition of Cudoform
6.29 Skorpios Technologies (United States)
6.29.1 The Skorpios Technologies Chip
6.29.2 Applications
6.30 Sumitomo Electric (Japan)
6.30.1 External Lasers
6.30.2 Electronic Integration on Glass
6.30.3 Fiber-array Interconnects for CPO
6.31 TE Connectivity (United States)
6.31.1 The TE Path to CPO
6.32 Teramount (Israel)
6.33 Third-party Transceiver Suppliers and Distributors and the Future of CPO
6.34 Startups, Investors and Pure Players in CPO
6.34.1 Product/Technology Focus of Future CPO Start-ups
About Lawrence Gasman and CIR
Acronyms and Abbreviations Used in this Report
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List of Tables/Graphs
List of Exhibits
Exhibit E-1: Summary of CPO Markets by Type of Data Center ($ Millions)
Exhibit 2-1: AI Data Center Switches Today
Exhibit 2-2: Thermal Management for Future CPO: Technology and Opportunities
Exhibit 2-3: Current Use of Silicon Photonics for CPO
Exhibit 2-4: CPO Testing Functionality
Exhibit 2-5: ELSFP: Possible Project Range
Exhibit 3-1: Future IAs of the CPO Kind
Exhibit 4-1: Types of AI Data Centers in 2025
Exhibit 4-2: CPO Markets by Product Type in Hyperscale AI Data Center
Exhibit 4-3: Switches in Hyperscale Network Racks
Exhibit 4-4: How CPO Changes the Physical Rack Layout
Exhibit 4-5: CPO Markets by Product Type in Non-Hyperscale AI Data Center
Exhibit 5-1 NPO vs. LPO
Exhibit 6-1: CPO Start-Ups
