After hitting Quantum, it also projected light and connected! The US government supports GFS.US (GFS.US) with $300 million, pointing to the CPO layout

The Zhitong Finance App learned that established US chip foundry GFS.US (GFS.US) announced on Wednesday that it has signed a letter of intent with the US Department of Commerce to receive up to 300 million US dollars in federal funding to accelerate the development of next-generation silicon photonic technology. Fueled by this news, GF's stock price once surged more than 16% during pre-market trading on Wednesday.

This funding comes from the R&D incentive section of the US Chip and Science Act and is the latest move by the Trump administration to guide chip R&D funding to key cutting-edge technologies. Prior to that, the US government had already promised to invest 150 million US dollars in semiconductor manufacturing equipment and 2 billion US dollars in quantum computing. It is worth noting that as part of this funding arrangement, the US Department of Commerce will receive approximately 1% of GF's shares.

This funding focuses on “silicon photonics technology” (silicon photonics) and “co-packaged optics” (CPO), which is closely related to it. Traditional chips transmit electrical signals through copper wires. As AI models explode in demand for computing power, the bandwidth and power consumption bottlenecks of copper interconnections are becoming more and more prominent. Silicon photonic technology uses laser beams instead of electrical signals to move data between chips, which can achieve extremely high bandwidth while drastically reducing power consumption, and is regarded as a key breakthrough in high-speed interconnection between next-generation AI and high-performance computing data centers.

GF made it clear in the announcement that it will use this funding to advance the development of silicon photonic wafer technology, novel optical materials, and advanced optical packaging processes. The company aims to achieve a data transfer rate of 400 Gbps (400 gigabits per second) while improving energy efficiency by up to 5 times compared to current mainstream solutions. The relevant R&D work will be carried out at the company's two core facilities in the US: Malta, New York, and Burlington, Vermont.

“GF has spent more than a decade building the technology, manufacturing footprint, and ecosystem needed to lead this transformation, and we have a mature manufacturing foundation to achieve large-scale production in the US,” GF CEO Tim Brin emphasized in a statement.

Bill Fraunhoff, executive director of semiconductor innovation and investment at the US Department of Commerce, said that chip R&D incentives will support a “breakthrough in computing and communication networks”, help the industry overcome traditional copper connectivity bottlenecks and provide strong support for the next generation of AI. “Accelerating the development of local photonics capabilities and advanced packaging will provide the US industry with the extreme bandwidth and energy efficiency needed to cope with complex AI workloads, making it safe and fast,” Fraunhofer said.

From an industrial safety perspective, this funding also has strong “localization” intentions. Currently, the supply chain for silicon photonics and advanced optical packaging is highly concentrated outside the mainland of the United States. Major manufacturers include Taiwan's TSM.US (TSM.US) and Israel's Tower Semiconductor (TSEM.US). The US side clearly hopes to establish a complete ecosystem from basic research and development to advanced manufacturing locally through federal funding support to enhance its strategic autonomy in global semiconductor competition.