Aeva unveils high-power optical amplifier to tackle AI data center power and thermal challenges

Aeva stock surges after unveiling high-power optical amplifier for AI data centers By Investing.com

Investing.com -- Aeva (NASDAQ:AEVA) stock surged 8% after the company unveiled a new high-power semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) designed for AI data centers and physical AI applications. The Mountain View, California-based company, known for its sensing and perception systems, is expanding its photonics expertise beyond FMCW LiDAR sensing into the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market. Aeva's new SOA delivers optical output power exceeding 28 dBm with wall-plug efficiencies greater than 20% at temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius. This development comes as AI workloads continue to scale, creating challenges around power efficiency, thermal management, and data transmission capacity in data centers. The company's SOA technology is manufactured in modern semiconductor fabs, which Aeva says enables "high yield, excellent reliability, long-term stability, and cost-effective scaling." "This new high-power SOA reflects Aeva's deep expertise in photonics and semiconductor design and has the potential to enable a new class of scalable architectures across both AI data centers and FMCW LiDAR applications for automotive and Physical AI applications," said Pradeep Srinivasan, VP of Photonics at Aeva. The company will present detailed technical performance and reliability results in a paper at the annual SPIE Photonics West Conference on January 19. Aeva's move into optical amplification technology positions it to address growing demand for high-performance optical components in next-generation AI data center architectures. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

Aeva Unveils High-Power Semiconductor Optical Amplifier for AI Data Center and Physical AI Applications

Aeva announced the development of a new high-power semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) delivering performance for demanding AI data center, supporting Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) architectures, as well as FMCW LiDAR applications. As AI workloads continue to scale rapidly, data centers are facing mounting challenges around power efficiency, thermal management, and capacity for transmitting large amounts of data. These constraints are accelerating adoption of high-efficiency, high-temperature optical amplification technologies to support next-generation AI data center architectures such as co-packaged optics, External Laser Small Form-Factor Pluggable (ELSFP), and high-bandwidth parallel optical channels. The development of the new SOA extends Aeva's vertically integrated photonics platform beyond sensing, opening new opportunities where high-performance optical technologies underpin the future of data centers, Physical AI and autonomous systems. Aeva's SOA technology is produced in modern semiconductor fabs, enabling high yield, excellent reliability, long-term stability, and cost-effective scaling to meet growing market demand. Designed to address these requirements, Aeva's Optical Amplifier demonstrates optical output power exceeding 28dBm while achieving wall-plug efficiencies greater than 20% at temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius. The combination of high power, efficiency, and thermal robustness drives lower system power dissipation, reduced costs, and significantly improves reliability in large-scale AI data center deployments and advanced multi-beam FMCW LiDAR systems. Aeva, the Aeva logo, Aeva 4D LiDAR, Aeva Atlas, Aeries, Aeva Eve, Aeva Omni, Aeva Ultra Resolution, Aeva CoreVision, and Aeva X1 are trademarks/registered trademarks of Aeva, Inc.