Toronto, May 29, 2026, 17:02 EDT
POET Technologies shares dropped 7.3% Friday, then edged lower after market hours as investors looked again at the AI photonics firm’s $400 million financing and what it means for bigger commercial orders. The Nasdaq stock finished at $12.29 and last traded at $12.23 just after 5 p.m. in New York.
POET’s timing stands out. Shares ended Friday down around 41% from the $21 price on its registered direct offering, which the company announced earlier this month. That deal included 19,047,620 common shares and attached warrants, which let buyers snap up more shares later at a set price.
The move caught attention as the U.S. market firmed up. Nasdaq Composite finished 0.2% higher, the S&P 500 was up 0.22%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Friday with a 0.72% gain, based on LSEG figures via Reuters.
POET Technologies said May 18 it wrapped up a financing deal, pulling in US$400,000,020 from one institutional investor. CEO Suresh Venkatesan said POET is “expanding our capacity by roughly ten-fold” for both wafer production and optical-engine assembly, aiming for more high-volume output through 2027. POET Technologies
AI data-center demand is still driving the bull case. POET and Lumilens announced a supply agreement this month for wafer-level photonic integration, with Lumilens putting in an initial $50 million order for EOI-based engines. The companies said that first phase could go to more than $500 million in total purchases over five years. Lumilens CEO Ankur Singla said GPU interconnects are a “defining bottleneck” for scaling AI. POET Technologies
POET’s financial base remains thin. The company posted Q1 revenue of $503,389, while net loss came in at $12.3 million, or 8 cents per share. Most of the quarter’s revenue came from non-recurring engineering tied to specific customer projects—one-off work instead of ongoing product orders.
Options trading signaled more big moves ahead. TheFly, via TipRanks, said Thursday that POET saw light options action, about 82,000 contracts, with calls outnumbering puts. Implied volatility was close to 142.49%, pointing to traders expecting large swings.
Legal headlines are still in play. Rosen Law Firm said this week anyone who bought POET securities from April 1 through 08:57 a.m. ET on April 27 has until June 29 to try for lead-plaintiff in a securities class action. The notices say the company hasn’t admitted any wrongdoing.
POET issued legal updates after its April 27 statement that Marvell Semiconductor had canceled all POET purchase orders from Celestial AI, following its acquisition of Celestial AI. Marvell pointed to supposed confidentiality breaches. POET said it’s still working with other customers and highlighted a different purchase order for about $5 million.
POET fell harder than Lumentum, which dropped 0.7%, and Coherent, off 4.0%. Applied Optoelectronics lost 6.3%. All are still trading on the data-center bandwidth story, but Friday showed investors focusing more on how each company is handling execution risk.
But POET’s disclosures flag some big risks. The company lists possible trouble with scaling up production, hitting performance goals, or seeing orders delayed or canceled. There’s also a risk sales don’t materialize after launch, plus the ongoing need to find more capital. The cash infusion could help POET build out more capacity, but the down case is that revenue lags, with new orders and qualification taking longer to turn into sales, which could pressure the stock after its prior move.
Friday’s close has POET looking less like a typical optical supplier and more like a play on execution. The story now is about whether AI-network demand turns a big financing and an initial order into actual shipments, real revenue, and ongoing customers.
