[News] Largan Expands CPO Push, Plans September Fiber Array Pilot Line, Eyes 2027 Revenue Contribution

Taiwan’s Largan Precision, a key optical lens supplier in Apple’s supply chain, is expanding into CPO. According to Liberty Times, Chairman Adam Lin said after the company’s shareholders’ meeting today that Largan plans to establish an automated pilot production line for its fiber array (FA) products in September and may invite a potential major customer to visit the facility.

Lin said the company has developed a proprietary technology that enables conventional V-grooves and optical fibers to be assembled into high-precision FA products. He noted that tolerance stack-up between V-grooves and optical fibers has been a key challenge for the industry, often forcing competitors to rely on the highest-precision V-grooves and optical fibers to achieve the required accuracy. Largan, however, can use less-than-perfect components to produce FA products with precision below 0.3 microns, outperforming the industry’s typical range of 0.5 to 0.8 microns, the report highlights.

Largan made its first appearance at Computex this year, showcasing CPO-related solutions and expanding into optical components such as FAUs (fiber array units) and MLAs (microlens arrays). The move is widely viewed as an important signal that the company is seeking new high-margin growth drivers beyond its core smartphone lens business, as noted by China Times.

The company’s investment in fiber arrays aligns with growing demand for CPO technologies. TrendForce forecasts that co-packaged optics (CPOs) will steadily increase their share of optical communication modules in AI data centers, with penetration potentially reaching 35% by 2030.

Largan Sees Multi-Row FAs as Next Growth Driver

FAUs (fiber array units) combine FAs with components such as microlens arrays (MLAs) and prism microlens arrays (PMLAs). According to Liberty Times, Lin expects single-row products to remain the industry’s primary source of demand through 2028. Over the next three to four years, however, rising computing requirements are expected to drive a gradual shift toward two-row, four-row, and eventually eight-row configurations, the report notes. Lin said this transition would play to Largan’s strengths, citing the company’s multilayer stacking and high-precision technologies as key differentiators.

Largan Eyes 2027 FA Revenue as Qualification Process Advances

Looking ahead, Lin said FA products could begin contributing to revenue in 2027 if Largan successfully completes customer qualification, the Liberty Times report notes. However, because the products have yet to enter mass production, the company is not currently able to estimate yields or gross margins. Meanwhile, preparations for low-volume production are expected to take about six months to one year. Lin said the production line will be highly automated to improve process precision and manufacturing capacity while reducing reliance on labor-intensive production.

Read more

• [News] Largan Precision Reportedly Teams Up With TSMC on CPO; Samples Said to Involve AMD
• NVIDIA Compute Architecture Paves the Way for Scale-Up Optical Interconnects; CPO Penetration in AI Data Centers Expected to Rise Steadily, Says TrendForce

(Photo credit: TrendForce)