Innolume Highlights from OFC2025
Innolume was excited to be part of OFC 2025 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco! At our booth, we showcased some of our latest breakthroughs in the area of pluggable optical modules as well as Co-Packages Optics (CPO), which was recently announced by NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang, as a platform to support explosive bandwidth demands for “scale-out connectivity” for AI clusters.
Watch Jensen’s speech at GTC 2025 from 1h32min: https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/keynote/
It was a great opportunity to reconnect with industry peers, competitors, partners, share our vision, and highlight the progress we’ve made since the last OFC in San Diego just one year ago.
Despite offering a broad product portfolio in 780 – 1350 nm wavelength range, this year at OFC we chose to focus on three key developments:
- 100mW at 85°C CW DFB lasers, which can be assembled with SiP PICs without optical isolator, simplifying the assembly process. We are happy to see the growing base of early adapters of our technology as well as that our lasers can support advanced generations of high speed modules. For example, last year HG Genuine and Eoptolink had live demo of 800G LPO DR8 transceivers, this year Genuine Optics and Accelink demonstrated 1.6T DR8 optical with no drive current adjustment needed for the wide temperature range of operation.
- 400mW at 85°C CW DFB lasers for External Light Sources for CPO. To the best of our knowledge this is the only 1.31 micron CW DFB laser capable of operation at such high power up to such high temperature. Thanks to our unique GaAs DFB Quantum Dot technology.
- And finally our recent breakthrough in QD comb-laser development: 24 channel 100GHz spaced comb laser - potentially most cost and power efficient solution for future CW-WDM optical interconnects. This work was selected for the prestigious post-deadline paper session—a true honor at the OFC conference and a strong recognition of our continued innovation.
Alongside diode laser industry titans like Broadcom, Coherent, Lumentum, and Sumitomo, we proudly presented our High-Power CW DFB laser at the workshop “High Power and Multi-Wavelength Laser Light Sources: How Can They Address the Needs of AI/ML Interconnects?” hold on Sunday, March 30.
The event brought together key players to discuss laser technologies driving optical communications for AI interconnects. More details can be found in our news
Dr. Janina Rautert took the stage during the final session of OFC 2025 to present our latest advancement in quantum dot laser technology — this time selected once again for the prestigious postdeadline paper session.
This marks the third consecutive year our work has been recognized in this high-profile part of the program:
- 2023 "High-Performance O-band QD DFB Laser for uncooled operation".
- 2024 "High-Power O-band QD Booster Amplifier for uncooled operation".
- 2025 “Ultra-Wideband, Flat-Top, 100 GHz Spacing Quantum-Dot Comb Laser for CW-WDM Data Transmission in O-Band”.
This year’s highlight: a 24-line QD comb laser with 100 GHz spacing and a flat-top spectrum, significantly increasing the number of usable channels over prior QD-based solutions. Designed for CW-WDM systems, it’s a next step forward for scalable, power-efficient AI and data center connectivity.
And of course, the big question to Janina after the talk: “So… what are you guys planning to present at post-deadline session at OFC 2026?”
Additionally, we would like to highlight the insightful interview between the legendary Andy Bechtolsheim (Co-Founder of Sun Microsytems, Granit Systems, Arista Networks, first investor to Google) and the optics champion Jose Pozo, CTO at Optica. The conversation covered the prospects of LPO technology to be quickly adapted by 1.6 Tbps pluggable modules with 200G bandwidth per lane, the potential to scale up to 3.2 Tbps either by increasing the number of channels or increasing the single channel speed toward 400Gbps. Recent innovations on new materials for 400G modulation as well as perspectives of QD lasers as CW source for external modulation were also discussed.
Learn the industry icon’s perspective: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/josepozophotonics_ofc-insights-five-minutes-with-andreas-activity-7313662070162440192-bF_e
In Jose’s follow-up film “QUANTUM DOTS GRAND TOUR @ OFC”, Al Benzoni, VP at Accelink gave a clear and compelling explanaitons of the advantages of using CW QD lasers in SiP-based optical modules, while addressing the remaining challenges for a full-scale adaptation. The tour continued toward Innolume booth where Alexey Kovsh, Ashok Krishnamoorthy (founder and CEO at Axalume, our partner company) and Janina Rautert walked Jose through the graphs and live demo showcasing the potential of our Quantum Dot technology
It’s definitely worth a watch:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/josepozophotonics_quantum-dots-grand-tour-ofc-we-love-quantum-activity-7314307959977607169-fFg_
Our OFC 2025 journey concluded with a small and informal gathering organized by the undisputed master of networking Carlos Lee, General Director of EPIC, in a beautiful venue overlooking Pacific Ocean and the mountains. The event offered a relaxed space for idea exchange, casual conversations, and building new connections with members of the global photonics community. As always, EPIC continues to play a vital role in fostering collaboration and business opportunities across the European and international photonics industries.
We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all our partners, competitors, colleagues, and visitors who joined us at OFC 2025. Your support, collaboration, and curiosity make all the difference.
See you next year at OFC 2026 in Los Angeles!
