New York, May 18, 2026, 12:08 EDT
- POET locked in a US$400 million investment, selling common shares and warrants to one institutional investor.
- Nasdaq-listed shares dropped 14.2% to $13.70 in recent trading, after starting the day higher and reaching $18.17 earlier.
- POET got the cash days after booking a Lumilens order and reporting a first-quarter loss, adding fuel to the talk around POET’s push on AI-optics.
POET Technologies Inc. stock dropped 14.2% to $13.70 in midday trading Monday on Nasdaq. Volume was about 47.9 million shares. This came as the Canadian photonics maker said it closed a US$400 million investment to help expand in AI data-center hardware.
POET is getting a bigger cash cushion from the financing as it pushes past development and looks to ramp up manufacturing. But investors are looking at the new equity and warrants, since issuing more shares could dilute current holders if those shares hit the market.
POET said it sold 19,047,620 common shares and the same number of warrants in a registered direct offering. The shares went to MMCAP International Inc. SPC. No placement agent took part, according to the company.
The shares and warrants priced at US$21 apiece, coming in higher than POET’s Nasdaq close of US$20.57 on May 14. The warrants have a US$26.25 exercise price and run for three years.
POET shares had a choppy session. The stock started at $17.00, jumped to $18.17, then slid to $13.66, market data shows. The company’s TSX Venture shares didn’t trade Monday as TMX exchanges were shut for Victoria Day. Trading is set to resume Tuesday.
POET said it plans to use the cash for manufacturing infrastructure, deals, R&D, its light-source unit, operations and working capital. CEO Suresh Venkatesan said the company is “expanding our capacity by roughly ten-fold,” mentioning Lumilens and what he called other “high-volume opportunities.” GlobeNewswire
POET’s new funding comes after its first-quarter numbers last week. The company reported revenue of $503,389, an increase from $166,760 last year. Net loss came in at $12.3 million, or 8 cents per share. Non-recurring engineering revenue is from single customer development projects, not ongoing product sales.
Lumilens is the main story. POET said Lumilens put in a $50 million initial order for EOI-based engines, the first step in a deal that could see more than $500 million in total orders over five years. The EOI, or Electrical-Optical Interposer, platform is built to combine electronics and photonics at the wafer level, using light to move data.
Lumilens CEO Ankur Singla said “GPU interconnects” are turning into the main bottleneck for scaling AI. That’s driving investors to optical-networking stocks. POET says its gear targets 800G and 1.6T optical modules, along with near-package and co-packaged optics used in AI data centers. POET Technologies
Marvell Semiconductor in late April canceled all of POET’s purchase orders from Celestial AI, after Marvell acquired Celestial, POET said. Marvell cited alleged confidentiality problems for the move. That puts more weight on POET’s Lumilens order and its work with Lite-On and Lessengers as proof the business isn’t pinned on a single customer.
Risks for POET remain. The new warrants could mean more shares in the future. Lumilens revenue depends on how development, qualification and ramp-up go. Quarterly sales are still small compared with the opportunity described. If there are delays in qualification, if future orders don’t materialize, or if investors see dilution as a problem, the stock could keep facing pressure.
Management is shifting at POET. The company named Sandeep Kumar as chief operating officer. Chief Financial Officer Thomas Mika has told the board he plans to retire this year, after a decade in the post.
Traders this week will be watching if U.S. shares stick near the $21 financing level or keep dropping toward Monday’s low. Canadians get their first shot to react in regular TSX Venture trading when it opens Tuesday.
