Toronto, May 17, 2026, 10:06 EDT
- POET finished Friday at $15.97, dropping 22.36% on the day, though shares ended the week up about 46% from where they closed May 8.
- The company is set to close a $400 million registered direct offering around Monday, May 18.
- Investors face new capital and AI optics orders, but also dilution, risk around execution, and a recent order cancellation tied to Marvell.
POET Technologies Inc. shares tumbled 22% Friday, trimming some gains but still leaving the stock well up for the week. The drop came as the optical-chip company locked in a planned $400 million financing and raised new doubts about how soon it can convert AI demand into real sales. The stock settled at $15.97, down from $20.57 Thursday, after touching $20.81 that day.
Trouble came over the timing. POET said it struck a deal to sell 19,047,620 common shares plus matching warrants to one institutional buyer for a combined $21 per share-and-warrant. That’s $400,000,020 in gross proceeds. Warrants let the buyer pick up more shares later at a set price. The SEC filing listed the exercise price at $26.25, which the company said fixed a mistake from the first press release.
Nasdaq is closed over the weekend, not for any holiday. Normal trading runs Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. EDT. The next holiday closure listed on the 2026 calendar is Memorial Day, May 25. Until then, Monday’s expected financing close stands as the nearest set market event.
POET shares swung hard this week, even for a small-cap chip stock. The name climbed 26.94% on Monday, dropped Tuesday, recovered Wednesday, then shot up 43.15% on Thursday before losing 22.36% Friday. Starting from a May 8 close of $10.95 and ending Friday at $15.97, the stock finished the week up roughly 46%.
POET raised a big round as it’s still ramping up commercial operations. The company said it’s putting the funds toward bigger manufacturing, corporate development and targeted acquisitions, ramping research and development, pushing its light-source business, expanding operations, and paying for working capital needs.
POET posted Q1 revenue of $503,389 and a net loss of $12.3 million, or 8 cents per share, shortly before the deal. Revenue was up from $166,760 a year ago, but spending stayed high as the company waits for bigger orders to turn into regular sales.
POET is touting an optical interposer that could link chips and data-center hardware by using light instead of just electrical connections. The company says photonic integrated circuits, or PICs, bring optical and electronic functions together in one package to boost data speeds and cut power use. POET is pitching the tech at AI setups and hyperscale data centers.
Lumilens stood out with a fresh order. POET said Lumilens put in a $50 million initial purchase order for electrical-optical-interposer engines and said the deal could grow past $500 million over five years, depending on development and qualification. Lumilens CEO Ankur Singla called GPU interconnects the “defining bottleneck” for AI scaling. POET’s Suresh Venkatesan said the new platform may bring “semiconductor-style manufacturing discipline” to optical engines. POET Technologies
POET isn’t seeing a clear run as an AI play. The company said on April 27 that Marvell Semiconductor canceled all orders placed by Celestial AI after pointing to confidentiality issues. Marvell bought Celestial AI and had said back in February that Celestial’s optical interconnect tech was meant for high-bandwidth, low-latency links in large AI setups.
Marvell stands out as the key peer and customer comp for POET at this point. Coherent and Lumentum have a place in the AI optical networking story, but POET’s latest step is tied to its own business. The company is raising funds and trying to shore up its manufacturing and customer path after a canceled order tied to Marvell.
U.S. holders face a tax overhang. POET said in April it expects to be a passive foreign investment company, or PFIC, in 2025—a label that can mean costly U.S. taxes. CFO Thomas Mika said POET does not expect to be a PFIC in 2026 and plans to move headquarters and redomicile in the U.S., pending the route selected and possible shareholder vote.
Stocks lost ground Friday, with rising oil and Treasury yields weighing on risk. The Nasdaq Composite slid 1.54% and semiconductor shares tumbled, the Philadelphia semiconductor index down 4%. Kenny Polcari at Slatestone Wealth told Reuters the market was “caught up in this momentum AI trade,” which has shown up in bigger moves for some smaller AI-tied names like POET. Reuters
POET’s upside comes with cash, customer orders, and AI data-center demand backing it. But the risks stay visible. Delays on Lumilens, financing that doesn’t close as planned, dilution outpacing new capital, or investors turning sour after the Marvell-Celestial deal could see POET’s rally reverse again before production revenue lands.
