Lightmatter forms consortium to seize CPO discourse power. Connects major manufacturers like Celestica, Dell, and Quanta to establish interoperability standards needed for next-generation AI systems. * 2026.03.18 * 03:00 * Industrial and Commercial Times, Li Juanping Silicon photonics startup Lightmatter, in collaboration with partners including Celestica, Corning, Dell, Flex, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, Hyve Solutions, Keysight, Qualcomm, and Quanta Cloud Technology, has launched the Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) Reference Architecture Initiative within the Open Compute Project (OCP). This initiative aims to promote open specifications and interoperability standards required for next-generation AI systems. With the rapid expansion of generative AI models, data centers face bottlenecks in bandwidth, power consumption, and spatial density in internal electrical interconnections, making CPO a crucial technological direction for next-generation AI infrastructure. Compared to traditional pluggable optical modules, CPO significantly enhances transmission bandwidth by tightly integrating photonic components into silicon chips and system ends, while also improving power efficiency and rack space utilization. It is regarded as a key solution for hyperscale cloud providers building AI clusters. The industry believes that moving CPO from technical validation to large-scale commercialization still faces several challenges. These include high complexity in component and system integration, insufficient cross-supply-chain interoperability, and incomplete reliability verification and mass production testing standards, all of which are critical factors affecting adoption speed. By leveraging the OCP platform to call for supply chain collaboration, Lightmatter aims to establish shared reference architectures, open standards at the component and system levels, and further build interoperability testing and certification frameworks to accelerate the deployment of CPO solutions. Nick Harris, founder and CEO of Lightmatter, stated that the AI industry is at a critical turning point, and the market requires solutions that can be manufactured, deployed on a large scale, and are interoperable, rather than single closed architectures. Open collaboration through the OCP community will help build a more comprehensive CPO ecosystem. Sameh Boujelbene, Vice President of Dell, also pointed out that the rapid growth of AI workloads has made data center interconnections a major bottleneck. If technological and supply chain gaps can be addressed through open collaboration, it will help expedite the adoption timeline for CPO. Lightmatter's collaboration with partners across servers, networking, fiber optics connectivity, measurement verification, and system manufacturing indicates that CPO development has shifted from isolated technological competition to ecosystem integration. If OCP-related specifications gradually take shape, they will facilitate the transition of hyperscale data centers from traditional pluggable optical modules to integrated optics. This will also bring a new wave of growth momentum to the supply chains of AI servers, silicon photonics, advanced packaging, and high-speed interconnections.

Hyve Solutions, a TD SYNNEX subsidiary specialising in hyperscale digital infrastructure, has appointed Jerry Kagele as president. He succeeds Steve Ichinaga, who is transitioning to an advisory role after 40 years at TD SYNNEX, including 15 years founding and leading Hyve Solutions. Kagele joined Hyve in 2025 and brings extensive technology industry experience, including senior roles at Western Digital and Sandisk, where he served as chief revenue officer. Ichinaga will remain with the organisation for one year as senior advisor, focusing on customer and partner success. The planned leadership transition aims to position Hyve Solutions for continued growth whilst maintaining operational continuity. Hyve designs and deploys hyperscale data centre infrastructure solutions for customers worldwide.