As demand for AI infrastructure and hyperscale data center connectivity continues to rise, POET Technologies has appointed Sandeep Kumar as Chief Operating Officer to help strengthen its global manufacturing and operational capabilities.
The appointment comes as POET expands its position in the fast-growing optical networking market, where companies are racing to develop high-speed, low-power solutions capable of supporting increasingly complex AI workloads and data-intensive applications.
Dr. Kumar officially assumed the role on May 11, 2026, reporting directly to Suresh Venkatesan. He was also named an Officer of the Corporation.
Veteran Semiconductor Executive Joins POET
Kumar brings decades of semiconductor and operations leadership experience to POET, having spent more than 18 years at Silicon Labs, where he most recently served as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations.
During his time there, he managed global manufacturing, supply chain operations, process engineering, packaging, testing, quality assurance, reliability labs, and prototype production activities. His experience also included working closely with design, sales, marketing, and enterprise customers across international markets.
Before joining Silicon Labs, Kumar held engineering and product leadership roles at Agere Systems, Lucent Technologies, and AT&T Bell Labs, contributing to storage technologies and semiconductor product development.
As part of the Bell Labs technical staff, he worked on technologies including ISDN interface chips, speakerphone codecs, and Sigma-Delta analog-to-digital converters.
Supporting High-Volume AI Infrastructure Production
According to CEO Suresh Venkatesan, Kumar’s appointment is expected to play a major role in preparing POET’s operations for larger-scale manufacturing demands tied to AI networking and optical connectivity markets.
The company said Kumar will immediately focus on strengthening its manufacturing organization in Malaysia as POET prepares for high-volume production.
POET has been positioning itself as a supplier of integrated optical engines and light source products designed for AI systems, hyperscale data centers, and next-generation networking environments.
Its technology is built around the company’s proprietary Optical Interposer platform, which combines electronic and photonic devices into a single chip architecture using wafer-level semiconductor manufacturing processes.
The company believes this approach can reduce power consumption, lower costs, and improve scalability compared to traditional optical networking hardware.
AI Infrastructure Driving Optical Networking Demand
As AI models continue growing in size and complexity, data movement inside AI clusters and hyperscale environments has become a major infrastructure challenge.
This has increased demand for high-speed optical interconnect solutions capable of handling bandwidth-intensive workloads while minimizing latency and energy consumption.
POET’s portfolio includes optical engines and modules supporting 800G and 1.6T connectivity for AI clusters and hyperscale cloud infrastructure, alongside chip-to-chip communication technologies designed to improve server-level AI data transfer.
Beyond AI infrastructure, the company also sees opportunities across 5G networks, edge computing, machine-to-machine communications, and sensing technologies such as LiDAR systems for autonomous vehicles.
Expanding Global Operations
Headquartered in Toronto, POET operates across multiple international markets, including the United States, China, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The addition of Kumar signals the company’s intent to strengthen operational execution as it scales production capacity and competes in the increasingly strategic AI hardware and photonics market.
With AI infrastructure investment accelerating globally, semiconductor and optical networking firms are under pressure to rapidly scale manufacturing while maintaining efficiency, reliability, and supply chain resilience.
For Enterprise Edge readers, the appointment highlights how operational leadership is becoming increasingly important as AI hardware companies transition from innovation-focused development toward global production scale.