GlobalFoundries has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for an expected $300 million CHIPS Research and Development award supporting next-generation silicon photonics. The proposed funding would advance the company’s development of optical materials, silicon photonics wafer technologies and advanced packaging for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing infrastructure. The letter of intent represents an expected award rather than completed funding.

Under the proposed arrangement, the Department of Commerce CHIPS Research and Development Office is expected to award GlobalFoundries $300 million to accelerate U.S. silicon photonics R&D. The work would use the company’s existing capabilities in Malta, New York, and Burlington, Vermont, to support a U.S.-based path toward high-volume silicon photonics manufacturing. GlobalFoundries did not specify a timetable for finalizing the award or beginning the funded work.

The planned program would support the development of near-packaged optics and co-packaged optics, as well as next-generation optical materials, silicon photonics wafer technologies and advanced packaging processes. The packaging work would include the company’s proven 3D hybrid bonding capabilities.

“The CHIPS R&D incentives will support a breakthrough in compute and communication networks moving past traditional copper bottlenecking to power next-generation AI,” said Bill Frauenhofer, the Executive Director for Semiconductor Innovation and Investment at the Department of Commerce. “Accelerating R&D for domestic photonics capabilities and advanced packaging provides American industry the extreme bandwidth and energy efficiency to scale complex AI workloads securely and rapidly.”

Semiconductor Industry Monthly chip graphic illustrating the proposed GlobalFoundries silicon photonics and advanced packaging R&D program.

GlobalFoundries has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for an expected $300 million award supporting U.S. silicon photonics R&D, advanced packaging and optical connectivity for AI and high-performance computing infrastructure.

Silicon photonics uses light rather than electrical signals to move information within and between computing systems. The technology is being developed to provide the bandwidth, interconnect density and power efficiency required as AI models, computing clusters and data center workloads increase in scale. GlobalFoundries currently provides silicon photonics technology for pluggable optical interconnects and is developing technologies intended to support the industry’s transition toward near-packaged and co-packaged optical architectures.

Planned research builds on the recently introduced GlobalFoundries SCALE platform, which stands for Silicon Photonics Co-Packaged Advanced Light Engine. The platform targets modularity, 400 Gb/s performance and a 5x increase in energy efficiency over current-generation implementations. These figures are GlobalFoundries development targets and were not presented as independently verified production results.

“Silicon photonics is essential to AI infrastructure. For a decade, the industry talked about the shift from copper to optical as something that was coming — today it is here, moving data at higher bandwidth and improved power efficiency as workloads grow more complex,” said Tim Breen, CEO of GlobalFoundries. “GlobalFoundries has spent more than a decade building the technology, footprint and ecosystem to lead this transition, and we have the proven manufacturing foundation to scale it — in the United States — accelerating technology leadership for generations to come. We are proud to deepen our partnership with the U.S. Government, and the CHIPS R&D Office in particular, to accelerate our programs.”

Under a separate agreement, the Department of Commerce will receive equity from GlobalFoundries representing approximately 1% ownership as of July 29, 2026. The company described the equity arrangement as a means of allowing the American public to participate in its future growth. Additional terms of the equity agreement were not included in the announcement.

The announcement also included statements from AMD, Broadcom, Cisco, Corning, Lumentum, Marvell, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Qualcomm addressing the importance of silicon photonics, advanced packaging and optical connectivity to future AI infrastructure. The company is working with customers to support emerging near-packaged and co-packaged optical architectures and next-generation optical engines through U.S.-based silicon photonics research and development.

“As AI systems scale, moving data efficiently is as critical as increasing compute performance. Silicon photonics and advanced packaging will be key to delivering the bandwidth, energy efficiency, and system-level connectivity required for the next generation of AI cluster infrastructure. We welcome GlobalFoundries’ continued investment in U.S.-based innovation and manufacturing, and the broader public-private collaboration needed to advance these foundational technologies,” said AMD CTO and EVP Mark Papermaster.

About GlobalFoundries

GlobalFoundries manufactures semiconductors for automotive, aerospace and defense, data center, smart mobile device, Internet of Things and other applications. The company operates manufacturing facilities across the United States, Europe and Asia. To learn more, please click here.

Source/Image Credit: GlobalFoundries

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Molly Bakewell Chamberlin
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