[News] U.S. Startup Wins First Commercial Order for Micro LED Optical Interconnect Chips

What happened

On October 22, U.S.-based AI interconnect chip company Palomino Laboratories announced that it had secured its first commercial purchase order from a strategic hyperscale cloud service provider for high-performance GaN-based Micro LED chips designed for AI optical interconnects, marking a key step toward commercializing Micro LED optical interconnect technology. The customer requires ultra-high-performance Micro LED chips specifically engineered for AI optical interconnects; Palomino noted that Micro LED technology originally developed for display applications is not optimized for optical communications and must be redesigned for high-speed data transmission to meet the link budgets and system requirements of AI data centers. In response, the company will continue refining its nanomaterials and device designs to improve optical output power and fiber-coupling efficiency, and said the product already meets the customer's targets for all other technical parameters. Founded in Delaware in 2023, Palomino focuses on the AI interconnect market over distances of 0 to 50 meters; through its patented wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology it can combine more than two wavelengths within a single Micro LED structure, and according to the company its approach could reduce power consumption to approximately one-sixth that of conventional solutions while delivering around 10 times the bandwidth density and throughput on the order of 10 Tbps per millimeter. In April, the company completed a private placement of USD 15.09 million allocated entirely to Micro LED optical engine development, acquisitions and integration, and customer sampling. In July, Palomino delivered its first-generation Micro LED optical engine prototypes to a hyperscale cloud provider; the customer completed system-level testing and confirmed the bandwidth exceeded Palomino's own design target, with second-generation prototype sampling tests progressing as planned. Also in July, Palomino signed a letter of intent to acquire interconnect chip company Vega Links in an all-stock transaction (a proposed acquisition that would expand its portfolio across copper, Micro VCSEL and Micro LED interconnect solutions) and began trading on the U.S. OTCQB market under the ticker PALX. Palomino said the purchase demonstrates that a leading AI infrastructure customer has recognized the technology's potential, and it will now focus on meeting performance requirements and addressing manufacturing and supply-chain challenges associated with volume production.

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

Source: TrendForce · 11/2/2026 · View original source