Toronto, June 7, 2026, 12:03 EDT
- POET fell 23.36% on Friday to $11.86 and was quoted at $11.68 after hours.
- The stock ended the week about 3.5% lower, despite sharp gains earlier in the week.
- The next test is macro-heavy: U.S. Consumer Price Index data, a key inflation gauge, is due Wednesday.
POET Technologies Inc. closed out a jagged week with a hard Friday selloff, falling 23.36% to $11.86 as investors dumped AI-linked and semiconductor names into the weekend. The move left the Nasdaq-listed stock well below the $21 price used in its May 18 $400 million share-and-warrant financing.
That matters now because the trade is no longer just about POET’s own order book. It is also about whether investors still want to pay up for companies tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure after a broad reset in chips and other high-growth technology stocks. POET sells optical engines, light-source products and custom optical modules for AI systems and hyperscale data centers, the large cloud-computing sites that run heavy AI workloads.
The stock had rallied 13.02% on Monday and 11.29% on Wednesday, then gave much of it back. From the prior Friday’s $12.29 close, POET finished the week down about 3.5%, with 56.4 million shares changing hands on Friday.
The wider tape was ugly. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.18% on Friday, while the S&P 500 lost 2.64% and snapped a nine-week run of gains, after a stronger U.S. jobs report raised concern that the Federal Reserve may keep policy tighter for longer. Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group, told Reuters that in tech and semiconductors “the dam just broke today.” Reuters
Competitive context did not help. Broadcom’s softer guidance earlier in the week weighed on the chip group, while Marvell Technology gave back 17% on Friday even as it prepared to join the S&P 500 later this month. Marvell and Broadcom are much larger AI-chip infrastructure names, but their moves framed the mood around smaller companies tied to data-center buildouts.
POET’s company-specific story still rests on execution. In May, POET and Lumilens announced a supply agreement covering a new electrical-optical interposer, a chip-level platform meant to link electronic and light-based components more efficiently. Lumilens placed an initial $50 million purchase order, with a supplier relationship that POET said could scale to more than $500 million over five years.
Lumilens CEO Ankur Singla called GPU interconnects the “defining bottleneck” for scaling AI, a phrase that captures why investors have paid attention to optical networking stocks. POET said engineering samples from the joint program are expected in late 2026, with production aligned to hyperscale customer deployments in 2027. POET Technologies
POET also closed the $400 million investment last month to fund manufacturing, research and development, acquisitions and working capital. Chief Executive Suresh Venkatesan said the company was expanding capacity by “roughly ten-fold” in wafer production and optical engine assembly, and had expanded its Singapore and Malaysia footprint. POET Technologies
The current financial base is still small. POET reported first-quarter non-recurring engineering, or one-off customer project work, and product revenue of $503,389, alongside a net loss of $12.3 million, or 8 cents a share. That leaves the stock highly sensitive to orders, customer qualification and the pace of manufacturing scale-up.
But the downside case is plain. POET said fulfillment of the Lumilens purchase orders and related revenue depends on successful development, module qualification and manufacturing scale-up; it also warned that results could differ if products fail to meet performance needs, sales do not materialize, or projects run into operating risk. In a weaker market, that kind of uncertainty can be punished fast.
The week ahead gives investors little room to relax. The May Consumer Price Index is due Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. ET, with Apple’s developer conference Monday and Adobe results Thursday also on the tech calendar. Ohsung Kwon, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo, told Reuters the semiconductor sector was “way overbought” and said markets may see more volatility unless CPI comes in soft. Investopedia
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