TORONTO, May 22, 2026, 18:04 EDT
POET Technologies Inc. shares fell Friday, closing at $14.59 on Nasdaq, down 1.55%. The price edged down to $14.54 after hours. Trading was active, with 33.4 million shares changing hands—far below the 100.6 million from May 15 but still heavy for POET, a small AI-photonics name. The stock has seen some swings.
POET is taking in $400 million from a single institutional investor and is issuing a lot of new stock. The company said it finished a non-brokered sale of 19.05 million shares, plus a warrant for another 19.05 million shares. CEO Suresh Venkatesan said POET plans to boost its production capacity about ten times for more output heading into 2027. The warrant gives the buyer the option to buy shares at $26.25.
POET, based in Toronto, builds photonic integrated circuits—chips that use light to transfer data. It also makes optical engines, light sources, and modules, mostly serving AI and data center markets. In a filing, the company said funds are slated for manufacturing scale-up, acquisitions, research and development, its light-source business, and general operations and working capital.
The stock dropped even though major U.S. indexes were higher. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were all up on Friday, Reuters data showed. Regular trading for the Nasdaq is 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern, with after-hours running to 8 p.m. U.S. equity markets close Monday for Memorial Day.
POET and Lumilens have lined up a $50 million first order as they push optical links aimed at boosting AI data center performance. AI data centers are running into transfer speed limits, and Lumilens CEO Ankur Singla called “GPU interconnects…the defining bottleneck for scaling AI,” according to a POET statement. The agreement could scale to more than $500 million over five years. GlobeNewswire
POET reported first-quarter revenue of $503,389, with a net loss of $12.3 million, or 8 cents per share. Venkatesan said in the quarterly release that deals announced with LITEON, Lessengers and Lumilens “validate the growing demand” for the company’s Optical Interposer platform. GlobeNewswire
Lumentum and Coherent are mentioned more often now as reference stocks tied to the AI-optics trade. Both have been in focus since Reuters in March reported Nvidia was planning $2 billion investments in each to boost their AI data center chip photonics.
POET ran into fresh issues in April. Celestial AI scrapped every purchase order with POET, the company said. POET’s new risk disclosure also cast doubt on what business could look like with Marvell Semiconductors now that Marvell owns Celestial AI.
Risk remains. New funding doesn’t mean POET will turn prototypes and orders into reliable production revenue. Delays, lost orders, or more shares from warrants and new deals could weigh on the stock, with terms of financing possibly mattering more than AI demand.
Investors are heading into this week looking for substance over headlines. They want to see if the $400 million capital raise goes to work in manufacturing, brings in more customers, and pushes POET’s market value closer to its revenue.
