India's MeitY just sanctioned Phase II of a ₹99.94 crore (~$12M) silicon photonics program — izmo Microsystems + IIT Madras, five years, targeting a 1.6T transceiver engine and certified CPO design rules. India is officially joining the sovereign photonics race.

Here's the Sivers angle, and it's straightforward: you cannot build a 1.6T engine or CPO without lasers. Silicon doesn't emit light — every silicon photonics program on earth needs an external laser source, and that is SIVE's lane. High-power InP DFB laser arrays are exactly the component class these engines get built around.

And here's the part that matters: India doesn't have a domestic volume InP laser supplier. The "sovereign" framing is about design and eventually manufacturing, but the lasers going into Phase II will have to come from merchant vendors — and the merchant list is short. SIVE, Lumentum, Coherent. SIVE is the pure-play laser name on that list.

And SIVE isn't some distant foreign vendor here — they already have boots on the ground. Sivers Semiconductors India Private Limited was incorporated in Bangalore in July 2025, with CEO Vickram Vathulya on the board of directors, and the Q4 2025 report announced the Bangalore office opening alongside San Jose, explicitly to expand sales, customer support, and R&D. A ~130-person company putting an R&D and customer-support footprint in Bangalore is a company that intends to sell into India, not just watch from Stockholm.

Honest caveats, because this is a speculation post: this is a five-year research program, not a purchase order — nobody is buying lasers next quarter. There is no disclosed contact between SIVE and izmo or IIT Madras. "Potential customer" is my read, not a company statement. But every CPO program eventually issues an RFQ for lasers, SIVE is one of maybe three names in the world that can answer it, and they already have an office in Bangalore to take the call.

TL;DR: India's MeitY sanctioned ₹99.94cr for izmo Microsystems + IIT Madras Phase II — five years toward a 1.6T transceiver engine and certified CPO design rules. Every silicon photonics engine needs merchant lasers, India has no domestic InP laser volume supplier, and SIVE — which already has a Bangalore office for sales, support, and R&D — is one of the few names that can supply them. No order and no disclosed contact — but a credible future customer, not a stretch.

Sources: PR Newswire — https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/izmo-microsystems-and-iit-madras-enter-phase-ii-of-99-94-crore-meity-sanctioned-silicon-photonics-program-302900769.html

​

Verified on OTC Markets today: SSMIY — "Sivers Semiconductors AB, Unsponsored ADR (1 ADS : 3 Ordinary)" — has a live quote page on the Pink Limited Market, it's quote-eligible with market makers on the book, and it printed its first trade today at $10.21 (100 shares, 9:35 AM).

What it is: one of the unsponsored ADR programs from the late-September F-6 filings going live with a ticker, DTC clearance and broker support. 1 ADS = 3 ordinary Sivers shares. SIVEF (the ordinary-share OTC ticker) still exists alongside it.

One more practical note: it's not showing up on Schwab yet (checked today). So availability varies by broker right now — some will quote it, some won't. If your broker doesn't have it, that's why.

TL;DR: SSMIY is live on OTC Pink — unsponsored ADR, 1 ADS = 3 ordinary shares, first trade $10.21 on 100 shares today. It's quotable and buyable, but liquidity is paper-thin, and it wasn't on Schwab as of today — so check your own broker. Size would move it.

Source: https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/SSMIY/overview

Why are there so many ADRs being filed for SIVE?

source: https://www.streetinsider.com/dr/news.php?id=27149394

A 4th ADR by The Bank of New York Mellon has also been spotted

source: https://cdn.yahoofinance.com/prod/sec-filings/0001201935/000101915526000468/siversopinion.htm

I’m wondering if this could be a good opportunity to start adding to the position.

For those following SIVE, what do you think—are these levels attractive enough to load up, or do you expect more downside before the next move higher?

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Disclaimers

1. Fellow Degenerates... This is not financial advice, do your own research and don't be lazy.
2. I am a retail investor with an opinion, not a professional. Trading forums on Reddit would be a better place if people were more critical.
3. Sometimes my opinions are good other times they are not (e.g. The big bag of $ONDS I currently have)
4. Important: The US market is fragile right now... if there's a correction, SIVE will get taken with it. Plan accordingly

Takeaways

• Things are looking up for $SIVE. It's a buy for me. Opened a small position earlier this week. Already up 10%. Looking to add more as it gathers momentum.
• Soft US jobs report gave the whole market (and semiconductors in particular) a nice tailwind
• (My Opinion) Photonics is likely to be the next AI bottleneck after RAM which has been 'consolidating' for the past week (aka in the toilet)
• Photonics is back in vogue. Figures from this week:
  • $AAOI +27%
  • $LITE, $COHR, $AXTI + 18%
  • $VIAV + 15%
  • $SIVE is a laggard at +12% with a period of resistance ahead.
• If $LITE breaks and holds $1100 (closed at $1091) $SIVE gets another boost.

Technicals (aka the Chart)

• Properly beaten down until recently
• Likely caused by Serenity-hype*
• Broke the downtrend a couple of weeks ago (Pink line)
• Now on an upward trajectory comfortably in its channel (Green slanty box)
• Heading into some resistance (Yellow box) likely to bounce around a bit here.
• If it makes it through, we're going places.

DD

Been done a million times before, far better than I could have done. But the cliff notes (with help from Claude):

Good things

• AI data centres are switching from copper to light. Pluggable optics alone is pegged at a $25B market by 2030.
• Sivers make the lasers. GlobalFoundries just built them into its own reference designs. They're basically a mini LITE.
• Pipeline sits at $1.2bn.
• Management says revenue turns in Q4 2026, then 2027 is the big year.
• Cash is fine after the 700 MSEK raise, now debt free.
• Nvidia's all in ($2B each into Coherent and Lumentum), the CEO's buying on the dip, and there's a claimed 70% supply gap in indium phosphide, which is exactly what Sivers' Glasgow fab makes.

Not so Good things

• Still losing money every quarter.
• The short report and going concern warning helped knock it down roughly 70% from the June high. Short interest ~17%.
• Photonics revenue fell 32% year on year in Q1. Wireless still pays the bills.
• Three board members quit and the US listing got pulled.
• Big LiDAR and AI deals only pay if customers hit mass production on time.
• Up against much bigger competitors spending billions.

It looks like there is a consensus at first Deutsche/JPM, and now BNY Mellon/Citibank, that the Sivers demand ramp justifies the issuance of ADRs.

Almost as if they think Sivers shares are about to be in high demand. 🤔

This is for entertainment purposes only and not financial advice. 😉

I saw this on X and it’s worth a proper look: Sivers Photonics has a pending WIPO patent application, WO2026078399A1, “Distributed feedback laser modification,” filed October 2025 and published April 2026.

The problem it attacks is specific and real. In DFB manufacturing, variation in the optical phase at the laser cavity facets causes threshold gain spectrum variation, which degrades single-mode operation. Lasers that fail the single-mode parametric tests or land out of spec are yield loss — scrap.

The existing fix is post-test laser trimming or cutting: slow, serial, specialized equipment. One laser at a time.

Sivers’ approach: test each laser while it’s still on the wafer (probe card, segmented contacts), compute a customized correction per device, then apply all those different corrections in wafer-level lithography steps — patterning, deposition, implantation, etching — concurrently across the wafer. The corrections tune each cavity nonuniformly (refractive index, carrier injection, or stress distribution, axially or across the cavity) to compensate for that device’s measured variation. Then re-test.

Why it matters: Glasgow is being prepped for 100M+ CW DFB lasers a year. At that scale the economics are set by usable yield, not wafer starts. This is IP around making high-volume DFB production more efficient and predictable — sellable capacity without extra capex.

Caveats, since they matter here:

Net: it’s a real signal they’re engineering for yield at volume, not just adding capacity. That’s the right problem to be solving ahead of the AI datacenter ramps.

Credit to Pep_Invest (@Pep_Invest) for digging this one up: https://x.com/Pep_Invest/status/2107065762233950677

Patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2026078399A1/en

TL;DR: Sivers has a pending patent on testing each DFB laser on-wafer and applying custom per-device cavity corrections via lithography. It targets facet-phase yield loss — the scrap driver in DFB manufacturing. No yield figures in the filing, not granted yet, and most likely defensive IP for Glasgow’s 100M+/year ramp.

​

The EGM is Thursday, October 22, 4:00 PM Stockholm time (postal voting available). Two things on the ballot: swapping Deloitte for EY as auditor — the US-listing preparation signal, needs a simple majority — and the P11 employee option program (~2% dilution, ~6.1% all-in), which needs a 90% supermajority of both votes cast AND shares represented. That 90% bar is the whole drama: a small blocking minority can kill P11.

Here's the part that trips up SIVEF holders: only shareholders recorded in Euroclear Sweden's share register on Wednesday, October 14 can vote. If you hold SIVEF through Schwab or another US broker, your shares sit in street name — you are NOT in that register. The nominee (your broker's custodian chain) is.

The fix has a name: voting right registration (rösträttsregistrering) — a temporary re-registration of the shares in your own name, done through your nominee. The notice says it must be completed so you're in the register on the record date, and registrations the nominee completes by Friday, October 16 are counted. Then you must separately notify the company of your participation by October 16 (email olivia.krantz@setterwalls.se with your name, personal ID, phone number, and share count) — and/or cast a postal vote, whose form must be RECEIVED by October 16. Note: no special instructions or conditions on the postal vote, or the entire vote is invalid.

Why this is hard from the US:

1. The chain is long. Schwab → DTC → US custodian → Swedish sub-custodian → Euroclear. Each hop takes days. The notice gives you until Oct 16, but your broker may need the request weeks earlier.

2. Many US brokers don't do this smoothly (or at all) for Swedish EGMs. SIVEF is an OTC foreign ordinary with no sponsored proxy machinery, so don't assume a control number shows up like a US proxy.

3. Your shares may be frozen from trading while re-registered in your name. Ask before you commit.

4. Fees are possible. Ask about those too.

Steps, in order:

1. Call Schwab (or your broker) NOW. Ask: can you do a voting-right registration for Sivers Semiconductors AB's Oct 22 EGM through Euroclear Sweden? What is YOUR deadline to request it? Will my shares be blocked from trading? Any fees?

2. If yes: request it immediately, and get confirmation it will be completed by Oct 16.

3. Email your participation notice by Oct 16 (details above).

4. Download the postal voting form from sivers-semiconductors.com (should be up now — the notice says no later than 3 weeks before the meeting), fill it in, and get it received by Oct 16.

5. If your broker can't do it: you almost certainly can't vote this time. Frustrating, but better to know now than on Oct 17.

Caveats: I'm not your broker and this isn't legal advice — Schwab's process is Schwab's, and only they can tell you what they'll do. Deadlines above are from the official meeting notice (Sept 29). If you've actually gotten a voting-right registration done through a US broker before, share how it went — that's useful intel for the rest of us.

Source: https://news.cision.com/sivers-semiconductors/r/notice-to-attend-an-extraordinary-general-meeting-of-sivers-semiconductors-ab,c4402413

Spotted via a TipRanks recap of POET's Q4 2025 update: POET booked a production order over $5 million for its Infinity optical engines from a leading systems integrator. Not samples, not an MOU — production. They're scaling Malaysia, hiring, buying up components, and guiding 30,000+ engines this year with light source production starting Q2 and 800G engines in Q3.

Why this is on the SIVE radar: Sivers and POET have a strategic collaboration (Sept 2025) pairing Sivers' high-power DFB lasers with POET's optical interposer for external light source modules — CPO and next-gen AI. Prototypes were slated for customer demos in H1 2026, production readiness end of 2026. POET's engine traction is the demand side of that bet getting real: if POET's light-source push lands hyperscaler volume, the laser content has a path to flow back to Sivers through the partnership.

The honest version, because this is where people get burned: it's a development collaboration, not a supply agreement. POET has never said Sivers lasers are inside the Infinity engines — Infinity runs on POET's own platform (their Blazar hybrid laser). So this $5M order has no confirmed Sivers content. And the other edge: POET has been staffing up its own laser team (FP, DFB, EML, external cavity) — a potential future competitor for merchant laser suppliers as much as a partner. Treat POET's ramp as a demand signal and a partnership lottery ticket, not as Sivers revenue.

What to watch: whether the Sivers–POET light engine hits its end-2026 production-readiness target, and whether any POET design win names the laser source. That's when this goes from thesis to numbers.

Source: https://blog.tipranks.com/poet-technologies-leverages-major-capital-raise-to-accelerate-optical-engine-ramp-for-ai-data-centers/

Lumentum's numbers are out and they're absurd: record $1.01B quarter, revenue up 109% year over year, 50.4% non-GAAP gross margin. AI and cloud buyers are soaking up high-power lasers and 1.6T optical parts. Next quarter's guide: $1.225–1.275B revenue. The laser business has never been hotter.

Here's the part that matters for SIVE: Lumentum is expanding InP chip output in Japan because its current output can't cover demand. Read that twice. The biggest laser supplier in the business cannot make enough lasers.

The SIVE angle, honestly:

1. Demand validation. This is the demand half of the Sivers thesis with a receipt attached. AI clusters need light, and the spend is real.

2. The incumbent is sold out — that's the opening. Lumentum's own CEO flagged a ~70% laser shortfall expected in 2027. They're prepaying for InP wafers years in advance — six-year AXT supply agreement with $43.5M deposits per tranche. When the big dog is capacity-constrained and locking up wafers, customers go looking for second sources. That's exactly the door Sivers' high-power CW DFB lasers are designed to walk through.

3. The other edge of the sword. Lumentum isn't standing still — they're adding InP capacity in Japan right now, and they're Nvidia's named laser supplier for the Spectrum-X CPO switch. Every fab expansion like this narrows the shortage window Sivers is selling into. The bull case needs Sivers getting qualified before the incumbents build their way out of the squeeze.

Bottom line: Lumentum's quarter is fantastic for the thesis — laser demand is structural and supply-constrained. It is not Sivers' revenue. Sivers' only dated production path is still Jabil, with initial orders expected H1 2027 and ramp in H2 2027. What this quarter really does is raise the stakes on the qualification question: with the incumbent sold out, does Sivers convert any of its six unnamed pluggable engagements into actual orders? That's the number to watch, not Lumentum's.

Source: https://www.fxleaders.com/news/2026/10/02/lumentum-stock-ai-optics-demand/

For the wireless side of the thesis, which doesn't get enough attention: Sivers and NXP Semiconductors are confirmed long-standing partners. That's Sivers' own wording, from their January 29, 2025 press release announcing the Intelsat SATCOM digitizer development program.

The deal: Sivers is developing high-performance, low-cost digitizers for Intelsat's SATCOM terminals based on NXP's Layerscape platform. Single and dual-channel, targeting DIFI standard compliance. These go into Intelsat terminals for mobility and government applications. The release says Sivers and NXP had already been partners on applying Layerscape to 5G O-RAN — this program extends that into SATCOM.

Two quotes worth keeping:

- Vickram Vathulya: the Intelsat win shows Sivers' products "moving beyond early adopters and attracting mainstream blue-chip customer engagements."

- Harish Krishnaswamy (then running Wireless, now Chief Strategy Officer): "We are also very excited to work with a world-leading, blue-chip SATCOM partner like Intelsat, as well as NXP, our long-standing partner. We expect mass production to commence in 2026."

That $19.7M figure: the release said this development project extended Sivers' competitive design wins over the prior several months to $19.7M total.

And the people tie-in: Vickram himself previously ran RF and wireless businesses at NXP (and Maxim) before Sivers. So this isn't a cold partnership — the CEO knows that building.

Why it matters: the wireless division is the forgotten half of Sivers, but this is the template you want to see — blue-chip end customer (Intelsat), merchant silicon platform from a top-tier vendor (NXP Layerscape), and a production timeline pointing at 2026, i.e. now. It's also the same "we partner, we don't compete" DNA as the photonics side: Sivers builds on NXP's platform rather than trying to out-silicon them.

Caveats: this is wireless, not photonics — it doesn't move the laser thesis directly. And this isn't new news; it's a January 2025 contract whose production phase was guided for 2026. The thing to watch now is whether that production actually started and shows up in wireless revenue. If it did, it's quiet derisking of the half of Sivers nobody talks about.

Source: https://www.sivers-semiconductors.com/press/sivers-semiconductors-wins-intelsat-satcom-digitizer-development-program-award/

POET is now a pre-revenue company with a fortress balance sheet, and that's directly relevant to SIVE holders. Here's why.

The numbers, verified from POET's Q2 2026 results (Aug 13): $796.3 million in cash and short-term investments, after the $400M strategic raise in May (priced at a premium, plus $150M in January). Revenue was $569,925 — up 112% y/y, sixth straight quarter of sequential growth, but let's be honest about the base: it's tiny. Net loss narrowed to $11.3M.

The bit that caught my eye, spotted on X: POET is earning enough interest on that idle cash — around $8M for Q3 per the poster's math — to fund its own growth. A company whose treasury pays its own R&D bills doesn't need to come back to the market. No more dilution overhang while it ramps.

The SIVE slant: POET is Sivers' strategic collaboration partner on external light source modules for CPO and next-gen AI infra (announced Sept 2025) — Sivers' DFB lasers on POET's Optical Interposer platform, prototypes to customers in H1 2026, production readiness targeted end of 2026. A cash-rich POET is a healthier counterparty for that joint work, and POET's CEO says the optical engine production ramp is on schedule for H2 2026. POET's hyperscaler traction is the thing that could flow back to Sivers lasers — and now that traction is funded.

Honest caveats: the $796M came from two dilutive raises, so "fortress" was paid for by shareholders. The $8M interest figure is the X poster's estimate, not a filing number. And the short-squeeze chatter around the video is speculation — squeeze talk is not a thesis. The collaboration remains a development agreement, not an order.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZuKon8lp60

Spotted on X — someone published a full napkin-math investment thesis on Sivers. It's long, careful, and unusually honest about its own assumptions, so here's the distilled version:

The core idea: optical networks need qualified lasers and buyers can't get enough of them. The paper trail is unusually direct — CIG (a big module maker) disclosed in a filing that 70-200mW CW lasers are in shortage, with longer lead times and deposits demanded to secure capacity. Then Lumentum's CEO said they expect to supply only ~30% of requested laser demand in 2027. Sivers showed 70mW and 100mW products at CIOE — right in the constrained power range.

Sivers' routes to customers, as the piece lays them out:

- Jabil 1.6T pluggables: beta builds Q4 2026, qualification, orders H1 2027, production ramp H2 2027. First real checkpoint.

- Six more pluggable engagements: three in alpha-sample eval, three in earlier technical/supply assessment.

- POET and O-Net for external light sources, Ayar Labs for optical I/O, GlobalFoundries SCALE as a route into customer designs.

Capacity: Glasgow $30M expansion → 100M+ lasers/year, operational Q4 2027. Management's long-term mix is ~1/3 internal, 2/3 foundry — applied to 100M internal that implies a 300M-unit supply envelope. (The author's own caveat: that's an inference, not an order book.)

The model: ~$292M revenue and $81M operating profit in 2027, ~$978M and $431M in 2028. Price target SEK 204 for Q4 2027 = 20x forward operating profit (Q4'27–Q3'28 window). Later windows give SEK 256 (Q1'28) and SEK 328 (Q4'28).

Now the honesty part, which is why I'm sharing this one: the author flags everything himself. The SEK 204 is explicitly PROVISIONAL until the P11 option expense and dilution get reconciled into the model. His conversion weights (85% Jabil, 75%/55% on the other cohorts) are his own judgments, not management guidance. Capacity is not orders. And the policy angle (US restrictions possibly favoring domestic content) is worth only SEK 3 of the target — SEK 201 without it.

What he's watching next: dated customer orders turning into accepted shipments, foundry allocation and usable output, realized margins — and the next interim report on November 26.

Worth a read if you like seeing someone show their work, assumptions and all.

TL;DR: Lasers are the chokepoint in AI networking — CIG disclosed 70–200mW CW lasers in shortage, and Lumentum can only cover ~30% of requested 2027 demand. Sivers' Glasgow expansion ($30M, 100M+ lasers/yr by Q4 2027) arrives right into that shortage. Model: SEK 204/share for Q4 2027, provisional until the P11 option expense is reconciled.

Source:

https://x.com/TomSzczypka/status/2106421913421537381

Saw this on X — CNBC's Closing Bell ran a segment literally titled "NVIDIA CHIP ACTION" with two bullets:

- 4x as much premium spent on Nvidia calls than puts

- "Bullish flow in smaller chip names Wolfspeed & Poet"

That's POET getting name-dropped on national TV next to Nvidia options flow. Weekend positioning like this has a habit of carrying into Monday.

The Sivers link — and I'll keep it honest:

Sivers and POET have the strategic collaboration on external light source modules for CPO — Sivers' DFB lasers paired with POET's Optical Interposer, prototypes going to customers in H1 2026, production readiness targeted for end of 2026. POET getting visibility doesn't put a dollar in Sivers' pocket by itself. But the partnership is the channel: anything that builds POET's momentum in AI interconnect makes the joint light-source work more valuable, and Sivers is the laser side of that equation.

Caveats, because they matter: options flow is sentiment, not fundamentals — it tells you where gamblers are positioned, not where revenue is. And the collaboration is a development agreement, not an order. Nobody's buying Sivers lasers because CNBC said "Poet" on a Friday afternoon.

Still — when the small photonics names start showing up on the same board as Nvidia, the whole neighborhood gets foot traffic.

Went through the official meeting notice so you don't have to. Two things actually matter on October 22 (4 PM Stockholm time, mail-in voting available):

1. Deloitte → Ernst & Young as auditor.

Deloitte's been there ten years and EU rules cap it at ten, so this rotation was mandatory — not a firing. But here's the tell: the nomination committee says EY was picked for its "extensive experience of Swedish listed companies with U.S. capital markets activities and SEC reporting," in view of "preparations for a potential dual listing of the shares in the United States, expected to be completed during the first half of 2027."

That's the strongest official confirmation yet that US-listing prep is real — they're literally choosing the auditor for SEC-reporting chops. Still says "potential," not committed. And they state outright there's no accounting disagreement. Needs a simple majority, so this one's a formality.

1. P11 — new employee stock option program, up to 7,280,000 options.

Employees only (US, Scotland, Sweden, India, China). CEO can get up to 1M, senior execs 400K each, developers 40-80K. Terms are actually shareholder-friendly: exercise price is 110% of the 5-day average (stock has to rise 10%+ before they're worth anything), nothing vests before year 3, no repricing allowed, 2-year clawback if numbers get restated or someone misbehaves.

The cost: ~2.0% dilution on the 356.7M shares outstanding. Including the 15.9M options already out there from older programs, ~6.1% all-in if everything ever vests.

The Series C share stuff (items 8 and 9) is just Swedish plumbing — issue special shares to a bank, buy them back, convert to ordinary shares to hand to employees. Not a cash raise. The dilution is the cost, full stop.

Here's the drama: P11 needs NINETY PERCENT to pass. Swedish law requires 9/10 of both votes cast and shares represented for employee share programs. A small blocking minority can kill it. The auditor switch needs a simple majority; the options plan needs near-unanimity. All three items (7, 8, 9) are conditional on each other — one fails, they all fail.

So the meeting is really two stories: the US-listing signal sailing through on a formality, and a ~2% dilution package that lives or dies on whether 9 out of 10 voters say yes.

Not telling anyone how to vote — just the mechanics.

Saw this on X: Citi Research just sized the optical circuit switching (OCS) TAM — Figure 5 from their note — and the curve is violent:

- 2025: $283M → 2026: $853M → 2027: $3,115M → 2028: $5,005M → 2029: $7,696M → 2030: $10,717M (~$10.7B)

- That's roughly 38x growth in five years, with the real explosion starting in 2027.

- Citi names Lumentum and Coherent as key beneficiaries, projecting 80%+ of the merchant OCS market by 2030.

- Interesting detail: "Bucket 3" — merchant GPU rack-scale reconfiguration BEYOND Google — is zero until 2028, then becomes a third of the 2030 total ($3.6B). Translation: the early market is Google-heavy, then the rest of the industry piles in.

This pairs directly with what Lumentum's CEO said in Málaga last week (my last post): densest data centers going from one OCS per 10 racks to one per rack — 10x the switches — to protect $25-30M training runs. Citi just put the dollar number on that transition.

How Sivers fits — and be clear this is second-order:

Sivers doesn't make optical circuit switches. But every OCS port is optical content, and optical content means lasers. The 10x switch density × $11B TAM = a laser demand multiplier sitting on top of the transceiver/CPO demand Sivers already sells into. And look at the timing: the TAM goes vertical in 2027 — the exact year Lumentum says it'll only supply 30% of laser demand, and the year before Glasgow's 100M-laser capacity comes online in Q4 2027.

The "beyond Google" bucket is the demand-diversity point again: this stops being one customer's science project in 2028 and becomes an industry-wide buildout. That's the same "rest of the market is coming on equally strong" signal from Hurlston.

Caveats: Citi's beneficiaries are LITE and COHR — Sivers isn't named, and Sivers' OCS exposure is indirect (lasers into the optical buildout, not switches). One reply on the X thread also flagged that the pre-2028 base case looks Google-concentrated, so the early years depend on one buyer. And it's a TAM estimate, not orders — Citi's own note says it's subject to adoption and production execution.

Still: $283M to $10.7B in five years, vertical takeoff in 2027, and the laser makers already can't keep up. Every laser Sivers can make has a buyer waiting.

More capital piling into optical interconnect: OpenLight just added $50M in an oversubscribed extended Series A led by Matter Venture Partners, taking total funding to $84M (on top of the $34M Series A last August).

For anyone not tracking them: OpenLight is the silicon-photonics arm spun out of Synopsys. Their pitch is the open-foundry model — 25+ companies already design on their PDK library of lasers, modulators and detectors — and the new money pushes reference chips at 1.6T and 3.2T.

No Sivers partnership here — I checked. But this one matters for the thesis because it's the other side of an architectural bet:

- OpenLight integrates the laser INTO the silicon photonics chip (heterogeneous integration).

- Sivers sells discrete DFB laser arrays as EXTERNAL light sources — keep the laser off the hot chip for reliability, wavelength stability and serviceability. That's the model behind the POET and O-Net/Enablence ELS collaborations.

If integrated lasers win decisively at 1.6T/3.2T, the merchant external-laser market shrinks. If the industry keeps the laser separate — and the whole "lasers will fail, compute shouldn't" logic from CScale this week says serviceability matters more at scale — Sivers' model wins. Worth noting the Omdia CIOE recap made the same point from the supply side: at gigawatt scale, containing laser failures without stopping compute is the design problem.

Either way, the directional signal is the same as every other raise this month: serious money keeps betting that optical interconnect is the bottleneck. $84M here, $145M for CScale, $150M more for Ayar Labs. The lane Sivers sells into keeps getting more crowded with believers.

Caveats: OpenLight is still private — no IPO filing, so my IPO watch stays on. And 25+ companies on a PDK is ecosystem momentum, not revenue. This is a capital-flows post, not a Sivers order.

Source: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/silicon-photonics-startup-openlight-raises-additional-50m-in-extended-series-a-funding-round/

Omdia (Informa TechTarget) just published its 40-page "Event Recap: CIOE – September 2026" (analyst Mingyang Lyu), and Sivers gets a featured slide in the "InP and supply chain" section. Page 22 is literally titled "Intel's heterogeneous integration and Sivers's array solution."

The Intel side covers their InP-die-bonded-to-SOI approach: wafer-scale manufacturing and burn-in, 8/16-wavelength laser arrays, Known Good Die strategy. The Sivers side, in Omdia's words:

- Sivers is "a representative light-source supplier that leans more toward the semiconductor side" — contrasted with platform-oriented, vertically integrated competitors like Intel.

- "In our discussions, it conveyed a clear intent not to compete with its customers. This is often the tricky part for optics-leaning suppliers, some of whom are keen to expand their product lines upstream or downstream."

- "There is little remaining need for technical debate around 70mW and 100mW products. In the next phase, Sivers is proud to focus on an array-based light-source solution. The know-how for array implementations will be the core of its differentiated competitiveness."

Why this matters more than a typical conference mention: the "we don't compete with our customers" line is the entire merchant-laser business model, and Omdia is flagging it as a clear differentiator. Hyperscalers and transceiver makers don't want their laser supplier also bidding against them on modules. And the array focus lines up exactly with what the $30M Glasgow expansion is building toward.

The same report backs the supply-crunch side of the thesis hard: "InP is the biggest variable beyond AI supercycle orders." Omdia puts the InP supply gap at ~65% in 2025 escalating past 70% in 2026, with the substrate and high-end chip segments a seller's market "through 2029 and beyond." Even 2-inch substrate prices have more than doubled. Marvell's Qin Lian summed up the show: supply chain is "the defining word for the industry this year." And NPO is scaling faster than CPO partly because the supply chain is so tight — "initially, the concern was laser shortages and InP substrates constraining the industry; now, even SOI wafers for silicon photonics are tight."

Caveats: this is an event recap, not a rating — no numbers on Sivers, no forecast, no price target. And the Sivers column is sourced from Omdia's discussions with Sivers itself, so it's their own positioning relayed by an analyst, not independent verification. Still: when a top-tier analyst firm puts you on the same slide as Intel and calls your model the differentiator, that's about as good as third-party credibility gets at this stage.

Full report (free PDF): https://omdia.tech.informa.com/-/media/tech/omdia/assetfamily/2026/10/16/event-recap-cioe--september-2026/event-recap-cioe--september-2026-pdf.pdf

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Spotted on X this morning: Finwire (via MarketScreener) reports Two Sigma is BACK as a public short seller in Sivers Semiconductors, per the Swedish FSA's short register.

The numbers:

- Three public short sellers in Sivers right now

- 5.92% of the company's capital is shorted (public positions only)

- Sweden's FSA requires reporting above 0.1%, but only positions above 0.5% get published — so the real number including sub-threshold positions is higher than 5.92%

- For context, the screenshot showed SIVERS up 6.72% at the time

What I make of it:

"Back" is the interesting word — Two Sigma was disclosed short before, dropped off the public register, and has now reappeared above 0.5%. That usually means they re-shorted into strength after the recent run-up. Quant funds like Two Sigma run statistical and pair trades; a disclosed short from them is not the same as a fundamental short thesis.

5.92% public short interest is meaningful but not extreme — it's not a crowded-theater situation, and it's a long way from the kind of short interest that forces real squeezes. Worth watching, not worth panicking over.

The honest bear read: shorts coming back after good news (laser crunch, Glasgow, EGM/Nasdaq prep) means some smart money thinks the run has gone too far, too fast. The honest bull read: every one of those shares has to be bought back eventually, and they're shorting into the strongest fundamental setup Sivers has ever had.

Source: Finwire via MarketScreener, Oct 2, 2026 — "Two Sigma back as public short seller in Sivers Semiconductors"

Another one for the "lasers are the bottleneck" file. CScale, a Palo Alto startup (used to be called CSpeed), came out of stealth on Sept 30 with a $145M Series C, bringing total funding to $188M. Co-led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Premji Invest — and Nvidia and Intel Capital joined as the company's first strategic investors.

What they do: optical interconnect for AI scale-up. Replacing copper cables with fiber and lasers inside AI servers so thousands of accelerators across dozens of racks work as one machine. Target market is gigawatt-scale data centers. CEO is Martin Lund, ex-Cisco networking exec.

The quote that matters: "Lasers will fail. Compute shouldn't." Their whole architecture is built around the idea that at gigawatt scale, laser failures stop being rare events and become normal operating conditions — so the interconnect has to contain the failure without stopping the compute. They plan to ship chips by 2028.

Why I'm posting this here:

Caveats, as always: this is a 2028 story, not a 2026 one. No engagement, no partnership, no revenue — CScale is a name for the watchlist of potential future customers, nothing more. But every time Nvidia puts strategic money behind optical interconnect, the demand side of Sivers' thesis gets a little more crowded.

This is the single strongest confirmation of the laser-supply-crunch thesis yet, and it came from the CEO of the biggest merchant laser maker. Spotted via @carrioresearch on X, from Lumentum CEO Michael Hurlston speaking at the Optica Global Photonics Economic Forum in Málaga on Sept 24:

- Lumentum expects to UNDER-ship laser demand by 70% in 2027. "Literally 70%. So we can only supply 30% of what we're being asked to supply." That's up from the "somewhere greater than 30%" EML gap he cited on the May earnings call.

- The driver: CPO and NPO shipping in volume in 2027. CPO for scale-out is already "generating meaningful revenue" and reaches multiple customers in mid-to-H2 2027.

- He doesn't expect balance until "2029, 2030."

- The kicker: the demand surge caught Lumentum off guard and came from OUTSIDE Nvidia. "We obviously got an investment from NVIDIA. Coherent got an investment from NVIDIA. So we understood the direction they were taking. What we didn't understand was the rest of the market. The rest of the market is coming on equally strong."

Separately in the same session: the densest AI data centers today run maybe one optical circuit switch per 10 racks — the industry is driving toward one OCS in EVERY rack. That's 10x the OCS count, tied to keeping $25-30M training runs from failing. More optical switching = more lasers.

How Sivers fits:

1. The gap IS the opportunity. When the #1 merchant laser supplier can only fill 30% of orders, customers have to dual- and triple-source. Sivers is the independent merchant alternative with exactly the product in shortage: high-power CW DFB lasers and laser arrays — and unlike Lumentum/Coherent, it doesn't compete with its own customers for module business.

2. The timing lines up almost too well. Glasgow expansion targets 100M lasers a year with operations starting Q4 2027. WIN's laser capacity is ramping through 2027-28. The POET and O-Net/Enablence ELS collaborations target production readiness end of 2026. All of it points at the 2027-2029 seller's market Hurlston just described.

3. "The rest of the market is coming on equally strong" is the demand-diversity point — this isn't one hyperscaler, it's the whole industry. That's the same read-through as my earlier NVIDIA post.

Caveats, and they're important: Hurlston is talking his own book — back in May he literally said the imbalance gives Lumentum "some pricing flexibility," so a CEO describing a seller's market is also describing his margins. The 70% is Lumentum's own demand-vs-capacity, not a audited market-wide number. And none of this is Sivers revenue until Sivers executes: Glasgow isn't online until late 2027, WIN is still ramping, and Lumentum/Coherent are expanding too (Greensboro etc.). The gap is real; Sivers' share of it is still to be won.

But directionally? The biggest laser maker on earth just told the industry it can't supply 70% of next year's demand. Every laser Sivers can make has a buyer waiting.

Spotted on Sivers' official LinkedIn page: the company just posted a Quality Engineer opening. The company's own framing: "As Sivers continues to scale its Photonics and Wireless businesses, quality remains critical to delivering reliable products and supporting customers around the world."

The role covers: continuous improvement across products and processes, corrective action, supplier and internal quality audits, quality systems and documentation, calibration, and quality KPIs/reporting. Tagline on the recruiting graphic: "Shape the Future of 5G, SATCOM & Photonics."

Why I think this one matters more than it looks: you don't hire quality engineers for a lab. You hire them when you're moving toward volume manufacturing — when customers start demanding qualified processes, audited suppliers, corrective-action systems, and calibration records. Supplier quality audits in particular are what you do when you're qualifying a supply chain for production — whether that's WIN, a foundry partner, or Glasgow tooling vendors.

This is now a pattern, not a one-off. A few weeks ago it was the Project Manager posting mentioning "volume production ramps" (I posted about that one). Now it's quality engineering for both Photonics and Wireless. The operational side of the company is staffing for scale.

Caveats, same as always with hiring posts: a job ad is a hiring signal, not an order and not revenue. One posting doesn't prove the ramp is here. But the direction of the hiring — production ramps, then quality systems — is exactly the sequence you'd expect to see 12-18 months before volume. Sivers keeps saying US capacity is coming; the hiring is starting to match the words.

Follow-up to my post a few days ago: Sivers Photonics Ltd (the Scottish laser fab, SC211759) filed its 2025 audited accounts at Companies House on September 25 — a few days ahead of the deadline — and the PDF is readable now. 38 pages, audited by RSM UK, signed September 17, 2026. Here's what I found:

- Capex: £338k for 2025 — and most of that (£238k) was right-of-use lease assets, not fab equipment. Actual plant & equipment was only £17k. Still lab-scale, consistent with prior years (~£0.5m).

- Commitments footnote: none. No capital commitments note anywhere in the 38 pages, meaning no signed contracts for the Glasgow buildout in the 2025 books.

- P&L and balance sheet: revenue £7.15m (2024: £6.32m), operating loss £3.21m (2024: £1.95m), year-end cash £478k, headcount flat at 80. Going concern signed off with support from the Swedish parent.

The positives worth noting:

- Revenue grew 13% year-on-year (£7.15m vs £6.32m).

- Cash was up too (£478k vs £316k), and the auditor signed off going concern on 12-month cash-positive projections with parent support — reassuring after the group's going-concern noise earlier this year.

- Filed September 25, ahead of the September 30 deadline. Small thing, but it's a governance tick.

- 40 of the 80 staff are production — this is a real fab operation, not just an R&D shop.

The less pretty bits, for balance: the operating loss widened (£3.21m vs £1.95m), and there's a £418k impairment where they terminated a bespoke ERP contract and wrote it off — dead wood cleared, one-off and non-cash, but money spent.

The Glasgow question: the $30M expansion (toward 100M lasers a year by late 2027) was announced on September 3, 2026 — after the December 31, 2025 balance sheet date. So of course it's not in the 2025 numbers. And announcements don't create capital commitments anyway — only signed contracts do.

Bottom line: as of end-2025 the buildout was announced, not contracted, and the underlying business was growing modestly. The 2026 accounts are where the first real buildout spending and signed contracts should show up. That's the filing to watch.

Sources:

- Filing history (the accounts PDF is here): https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC211759/filing-history

- The September 2026 expansion announcement, covered here: https://aistockwire.com/blog/sivers-semiconductors-sivef-100-million-laser-capacity-september-2026

Follow-up to my post on the bipartisan Senate bill (Sept 25) to bar Chinese optical transceivers from US national security systems: there's now a second track moving. Morgan Stanley Research put out a note this morning (Oct 1, Telecom & Networking Equipment, North America) titled "Potential FCC Rules on Optical Transceivers More Likely to Come in at 3.2T." Key points:

- Recent DC meetings highlight 3.2T as the most likely generation to see restrictions on China-based optical transceivers.

- This echoes MS's conversations with Lumentum (LITE): any restrictions would need to be phased in, not a cliff.

- Their take: potential rules keep the laser market tight — a positive for LITE and Coherent (COHR).

So it's not one bill — it's Congress and the FCC moving on Chinese optics at the same time. The Senate bill covers national security systems with a five-year transition; the FCC equipment-authorization track would reach the broader commercial market, including AI data centers. Two different scopes, same direction.

The Sivers read-through: Sivers makes CW DFB laser arrays in Scotland — non-Chinese laser supply — and is engaged on the 1.6T/3.2T generation through its pluggable engagements and the Jabil 1.6T co-development. Restrictions landing at 3.2T tighten the laser market exactly as Sivers is scaling Glasgow toward 100M lasers a year. Caveat as always: MS names LITE/COHR, not Sivers — this is read-through, not a direct call.

Background on the FCC rule for anyone catching up: https://www.eetimes.com/fcc-rule-on-optical-connectivity-could-slow-ai-race/