[News] Vuzix Enters Optical Interconnect, San’an Backs Micro LED Startup, Hint at AI Transmission Market

Micro LED optical interconnect is gaining momentum in 2026. Two recent developments highlight growing interest in the emerging field:

• S. AR glasses maker Vuzix unveiled an optical interconnect evaluation platform based on its waveguide technology at the OCP Global Summit;
• Chinese Micro LED optical interconnect chip developer Xinghuo Chenguang completed its first funding round, with San’an Optoelectronics participating as a follow-on investor.

The 2026 OCP Global Summit was held in San Jose, California, from October 12 to 15. At the event, Vuzix, a U.S. developer of smart glasses and optical waveguides, demonstrated its Vuzix Causeway optical interconnect evaluation platform, targeting AI data centers, semiconductors, and photonics applications.

The platform brings Vuzix’s proprietary diffractive waveguide technology into optical interconnects, enabling thousands of parallel optical paths to be routed across a compact planar substrate. The approach offers a potential high-density optical connectivity solution for co-packaged optics (CPO), near-packaged optics (NPO), and AI computing.

The current evaluation platform supports 19,200 parallel optical paths over an optical path length of approximately 30mm. Once light sources, detectors, and system integration are completed, the technology is expected to support aggregate bandwidth in the multi-terabit range for communications applications.

Its waveguide architecture can also be customized for different source wavelengths and illumination configurations, making it compatible with Micro LED and VCSEL light sources.

Vuzix is currently making evaluation units available to qualified industry partners, allowing engineers to measure key parameters such as insertion loss, crosstalk, channel density, and coupling alignment. The company shipped its first Causeway waveguide bridge samples to selected customers in August.

San’an Invests as Xinghuo Chenguang Completes First Funding Round

On October 14, Beijing-based Xinghuo Chenguang Technology announced the completion of its first funding round, led by Sequoia China, with San’an participating as a follow-on investor. Yunxiu Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for subsequent funding rounds. The amount raised was not disclosed.

Xinghuo Chenguang focuses on semiconductor chips and optoelectronic interconnect technologies, developing Micro LED-based optical interconnect chips and related solutions. Its target applications include high-speed, low-power data exchange between chips and between computing and memory in AI and high-performance computing systems. The company is also among a small number of domestic teams with in-house R&D capabilities spanning epitaxy, chip development, and system integration.

Previously, the company had already disclosed progress in its technology development. On September 28, Xinghuo Chenguang, Yuanxu Optoelectronics, and Tsinghua University announced a milestone in Micro LED optical interconnect chip R&D.

Joint testing by Tsinghua University and Xinghuo Chenguang showed that a Micro LED chip sample achieved a -3 dB bandwidth of 3.5 GHz at a current density of 500 A/cm², demonstrating high-speed response at the 3 GHz level. The results provide measured data to support subsequent matching and design of driver circuits, receivers, and optical coupling systems.

In the next phase, the three parties will focus on device consistency, array integration, and packaging interconnects, while conducting link-level testing to validate communication performance. The goal is to advance the technology from chip-level development toward application-ready products.

(Photo credit: Vuzix)