GlobalFoundries signs LOI for expected $300 million U.S. silicon photonics award

GlobalFoundries signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for an expected award of up to $300 million from the CHIPS Research and Development Office to help move silicon photonics into high-volume U.S. manufacturing for AI and high-performance computing systems. The proposed funding remains subject to negotiation and additional due diligence, and Commerce would receive a minority, non-controlling equity stake that GlobalFoundries said would equal about 1% ownership as of July 29, 2026. The GlobalFoundries award was included in a broader Commerce package of $874 million in letters of intent for seven semiconductor and equipment companies, according to a National Institute of Standards and Technology blog post. The funding is aimed at critical technologies including advanced integrated photonics, compute architectures and memory for computing and AI systems. Shares of GlobalFoundries rose about 9.5% in premarket trading after the company’s announcement. GlobalFoundries said the funding would support next-generation silicon photonics wafer technologies, novel optical materials and advanced packaging including 3D hybrid bonding, a key enabler for near-packaged and co-packaged optical architectures. The company said the program builds on its SCALE platform, targeting 400 Gb/s data-transfer speeds and up to five times greater energy efficiency than current pluggable optical transceivers. GlobalFoundries also said it aims to more than double silicon photonics revenue in 2026 and reach an annualized run rate above $1 billion by the end of 2028.