Tower and Marvell Pass 5 Million Optical Chips, Sees a Bigger AI Market Ahead
Tower Semiconductor said it reached a major milestone with Marvell Technology, after the two companies together delivered more than 5 million coherent optical communication chips to customers. The chips, known as Coherent PICs, are built on Tower’s silicon photonics platform and are designed for high-speed data center interconnect links, a fast-growing part of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Marvell senior vice president and optical CTO Dr. Rajeev Nagarajan said the partnership should continue driving the next generation of coherent optical technologies. He said the collaboration will help bring advanced, efficient and high-performance photonics solutions to market for demanding AI applications.
Tower CEO Russell Ellwanger told Globes the announcement was especially significant. He pointed to remarks by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a major industry conference in Taiwan two weeks ago, where Huang said Marvell is critical to AI infrastructure and could become the next company to reach a $1 trillion valuation, from about $254 billion today. Ellwanger said Tower and Marvell are working on several technologies aimed at improving coherent chips and silicon photonics for optical communications.
Ellwanger said Tower’s TFLN technology, an advanced material for very high-speed, low-power optical modulators, is being integrated with silicon wafers entirely inside Tower’s facilities, and that this combination has produced results he says are unmatched in the market. Based on current trends, he said the data center interconnect market could grow fivefold and reach $1 billion to $1.2 billion on its own, excluding Tower’s current SiPho business, which generated about $238 million in 2025.
Tower recently said it had signed contracts worth more than $1.3 billion for next year in that business. The company’s 2028 targets remain $2.8 billion in revenue and $750 million in net profit, and Ellwanger said those are goals, not forecasts, though results could arrive earlier. He also said Tower is waiting for Japanese government approval for a grant tied to expanding capacity at its 300 mm plant in Japan.
