REG - IQE PLC - IQE plc: Tower Semiconductor InP supply agreement - TradingView

IQE plc and Tower Semiconductor have announced a multi-year agreement for the supply of Indium Phosphide (InP) epiwafers, aimed at supporting their collaboration in silicon photonics technology. This ... Read original →

The IQE-Tower InP epiwafer deal marks a pivotal maturation of silicon photonics as a viable high-volume platform. Technically, integrating InP modulators with silicon photonics accelerates 400G/800G pluggable transceiver deployment, directly enabling denser optical interconnects in AI data centers. From a compliance standpoint, the royalty-free porous silicon license eliminates litigation risk and mitigates exposure to potential U.S. export controls on compound semiconductors—enhancing supply chain resilience. Competitively, this alliance pressures Lumentum, Coherent, and Taiwan, China’s WIN Semiconductors; those lacking integrated InP-CMOS capabilities risk obsolescence in premium optical markets. Over the next 12–24 months, the industry will shift from component-level rivalry to full-stack co-optimization of materials, process, and packaging—especially as TSMC remains non-committal on silicon photonics foundry services, leaving Tower and IQE to capture early ecosystem dominance.