SANTA CLARA, CA, UNITED STATES, March 5, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — OpenLight, a leader in heterogeneous III-V-on-silicon photonic integration and custom Photonic Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (PASICs), today announced the first-ever volume production orders by a customer on its PH18DA indium phosphide (InP) on silicon photonic platform, developed in collaboration with Tower Semiconductor. This milestone based on NewPhotonics® 800G and 1.6T laser-integrated PIC solution marks a major step forward bringing highly integrated, laser-enabled photonic ICs into high-volume production for AI and hyperscale data center networks.
For OpenLight, this production order represents an important transition from advanced development to manufacturing-ready deployment, validating the PH18DA process as a scalable, production-proven platform for next-generation optical connectivity. NewPhotonics is the first OpenLight customer to bring its designs to volume production on PH18DA, enabling improved bandwidth density, power efficiency, and footprint reduction compared with conventional discrete silicon photonics optical implementations.
The production designs were developed using the OpenLight Process Design Kit (PDK), integrating active photonic components into a single monolithic photonic integrated circuit (PIC). This level of integration shrinks the overall footprint, eliminates multiple sources of optical loss, reduces packaging and assembly costs, and delivers improved signal quality and energy efficiency critical for large-scale AI infrastructure designed for scale-up and scale-out data center deployments.
“Reaching our first customer orders in volume production with PH18DA is a defining milestone for OpenLight and a clear validation of our heterogeneous III V on silicon platform,” said Dr. Adam Carter, CEO, OpenLight. “This achievement demonstrates that our technology is ready for production and capable of supporting real customer products at 800G and 1.6T for AI data center networks.”
“The OpenLight platform enables us to deploy highly integrated photonic ICs built for volume, performance and scale demands in a single solution,” said Doron Tal, SVP and GM of Optical Connectivity, NewPhotonics. “With 200G-per-lane designs and heterogeneously integrated lasers on a monolithic PIC, our customers can leverage our unique OSPic™ optical signal processing in a unified architecture that delivers the power efficiency, bandwidth density and manufacturing consistency required for DSP-based and LPO OSFP pluggable and near-packaged optics (NPO) solutions.”
“The PH18DA process was developed to enable scalable, high-yield manufacturing of heterogeneous photonic ICs enabling Tower to expand its served market in optical modules by adding an integrated laser to our offering,” said Dr. Ed Preisler, Vice President and General Manager of RF Business Unit, Tower Semiconductor. “The first orders for volume production demonstrate the maturity of the process and its readiness to support advanced optical platforms at production scale.”
OpenLight will participate in OFC 2026, held March 15–19 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California.
For more information on OpenLight’s production-ready photonic platform and the PH18DA process, please visit booth #2449 or www.openlightphotonics.com.
To see NewPhotonics demonstrating its product portfolio, visit #5633/#5732 at OFC 2026 or https://newphotonics.com/.
To learn more about Tower Semiconductor’s silicon photonics platform, visit booth #2221. Additional information is available on the company’s website.
About OpenLight
OpenLight is the world leader in custom PASIC design.
OpenLight’s world-leading PASiC technology, supported by its process design kit (PDK), integrates all active and passive components of silicon photonics devices into a single chip, enabling high-performance, energy-efficient photonics solutions across datacom, telecom, automotive, AI, and quantum computing applications and markets.
The company secured Series A funding in August 2025 and this, combined with its 360-strong patent portfolio is enabling OpenLight to bring optical solutions to places it has never been before and underpin technologies and innovation that weren’t previously possible. The company is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, with offices in Silicon Valley.
Read more at www.openlightphotonics.com
Mallory Robertson
Grand Bridges
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