GlobalFoundries signs letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for a $300 million award to accelerate U.S. silicon photonics leadership

MALTA, N.Y., July 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GlobalFoundries (Nasdaq: GFS) today announced it has entered into a letter of intent (LOI) with the U.S. Department of Commerce to accelerate research and development of next-generation silicon photonics — the optical technology that moves data at the speed of light and underpins the AI and high-performance computing data centers driving the global economy. Under the LOI, the Department’s CHIPS Research and Development Office is expected to award GF $300 million to advance next-generation optical materials, wafer technologies and advanced packaging, reinforcing U.S. leadership in a technology essential to AI infrastructure.

The award will accelerate GF’s development of next-generation silicon photonics wafer technologies, novel optical materials and advanced packaging, including proven 3D hybrid bonding, that enable the roll-out of near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO). This work builds directly on GF’s recently introduced SCALE™ (Silicon Photonics Co-Packaged Advanced Light Engine) platform, targeting industry-leading modularity, 400Gb/s performance and a 5x increase in energy efficiency over current-generation implementations.