Ayar Labs has named Sankara Venkateswaran as its new Vice President of Engineering, strengthening its leadership team as the company advances co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions for AI scale-up. The appointment comes at a critical stage as Ayar Labs prepares its technology for mass production to support hyperscale AI workloads.
The company is recognized for its work in CPO, an emerging technology designed to address bandwidth and power limitations associated with traditional copper interconnects. As AI infrastructure expands rapidly, demand is increasing for higher-performance, energy-efficient connectivity solutions within advanced data center architectures.
In his new role, Venkateswaran will lead Ayar Labs’ engineering organization. He will oversee the development of the company’s TeraPHY optical engines, guiding architecture, design, and product execution. The focus will be on delivering production-grade silicon capable of integrating into advanced packaging flows required by hyperscale customers.
Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs, said Venkateswaran brings deep expertise in network acceleration silicon. He noted that his experience building high-performing engineering teams aligns with the company’s plans to accelerate CPO deployment and meet growing AI infrastructure demands.
Venkateswaran described co-packaged optics as moving from early-stage innovation toward becoming core infrastructure. He stated that his priority will be to deliver high-performance, compatible, and manufacturing-ready CPO solutions designed to overcome bandwidth and power constraints in large-scale AI systems.
Venkateswaran brings more than 26 years of industry experience across mobile, compute, networking, and infrastructure silicon. He has held senior engineering and leadership roles at Atheros, Qualcomm, and Intel. At Intel, he served as Vice President of Foundational Networking Silicon Engineering, leading global teams responsible for Ethernet controllers and networking SoCs targeting hyperscale and enterprise markets.
His appointment follows Ayar Labs’ recent collaborations with Alchip and GUC, reflecting ongoing efforts to scale its co-packaged optics solutions for high-volume deployment. The company continues to position CPO as a scalable alternative to copper-based interconnects, offering improved performance, lower power consumption, and cost efficiency for next-generation AI infrastructure.
