NEW YORK, May 24, 2026, 14:04 (EDT)
- POET ended Friday at $14.59, falling 8.6% for the week. The drop came after the company wrapped up a $400 million stock-and-warrant deal.
- U.S. stock markets are closed for the weekend and will stay shut on Monday for Memorial Day. The next trading day is Tuesday, May 26.
- The focus is now on whether POET can turn its AI optical-networking deals into actual revenue quickly enough to back up the stock’s strong move this year.
POET Technologies Inc. finished weaker in a choppy, shortened holiday week after its $400 million financing took the steam out of a rally powered by artificial-intelligence infrastructure optimism.
Shares on the Nasdaq finished Friday at $14.59, slipping 1.55% for the day and 8.6% over the week. The S&P 500 added around 0.9% and the Nasdaq Composite gained about 0.5%. Despite the pullback, the stock is still ahead about 130.5% for the year, showing just how sharply investors have revalued the Toronto photonics firm.
Why does it matter now? POET wants to go from a concept to actually making optical chips, using light instead of just electricity to push data through AI data centers. The stock is pulled between optimism about new money and worries about dilution as more shares come in.
POET said May 18 it wrapped up a registered direct offering by selling 19,047,620 common shares and the same number of warrants. Each warrant lets the holder buy a share at a later date for a set price. The sale brought in $400,000,020 in gross proceeds, priced at $21 for each share and warrant combined. The warrants can be exercised at $26.25 and are good for three years.
POET said it will put the cash into ramping up manufacturing, corporate development which could mean acquisitions, research and development, speeding up work on its light-source unit, and general working capital. The new funds boost POET’s balance sheet headed into the week, but the company now faces a heavier execution load.
Investors are looking at the funding in light of POET’s limited sales. The company posted first-quarter revenue of $503,389, a jump from $166,760 last year. Net loss was $12.3 million, or 8 cents per share. R&D spending came in at $4.5 million.
Lumilens is the main commercial focus. POET and Lumilens said May 14 they signed a supply and joint-development deal for wafer-level photonic integration, with Lumilens making an initial $50 million purchase order for EOI-based engines. POET said the supplier deal could grow to over $500 million in total purchases within five years, depending on development, qualification and scaling manufacturing.
“GPU interconnects are emerging as the defining bottleneck for scaling AI,” Lumilens CEO Ankur Singla said in the statement. POET CEO Suresh Venkatesan said the platform might bring “semiconductor-style manufacturing discipline” to optical engines. GlobeNewswire
The company expects engineering samples from the program in late 2026 and plans for production to match with hyperscaler customer rollouts in 2027. That schedule means the gap between today’s stock move and evidence from customers remains.
Competitive pressure is thorny here. Marvell Technology is still tangled in the POET story. Marvell, which bought Celestial AI, wiped out all purchase orders between Celestial and POET back in April, pointing to supposed confidentiality violations. POET at the time said other customer shipments were still in motion, including a roughly $5 million order it had already disclosed.
The peer setup isn’t entirely negative. Optical-networking stocks like Lumentum and Coherent are seeing heavy investor interest on AI data center demand for faster links, but POET is much smaller and at an earlier stage than those players. The stock reacts more to updates on purchase orders, financing details, and swings in retail trading.
Another issue is tax status. POET says it was a passive foreign investment company, or PFIC, for 2025. That U.S. tax category can mean worse tax rules for some American holders. CFO Thomas Mika said POET thinks it won’t be a PFIC in 2026. The company also said its board signed off on a plan to move its home base to the U.S.
But the downside is simple. Lumilens sales need successful development and product checks, while the new offering puts a big chunk of shares and possible warrants into play. POET’s last quarter still brought in just around half a million dollars. If there’s another customer delay, an order fight, or soft risk demand when trading resumes Tuesday, the stock could slip back to last month’s swings.
