POET Technologies built its public story around one customer: Celestial AI, now owned by Marvell Semiconductor. On Monday, the company disclosed that Marvell has canceled every one of those purchase orders, sending POET shares down roughly 47% in the steepest single-day fall in company history.
The cancellation notice arrived on April 23, with POET making the disclosure to investors before Monday's market open.
POET makes high-speed optical engines used in AI networking and hyperscale data centers, and its big break came in April 2023 when it announced production orders from Celestial AI. Investors treated that deal as proof the company's technology was finally ready for prime time.
Marvell acquired Celestial AI earlier this year, and on April 23 it sent POET written notice canceling all of those orders. Marvell cited what it called confidentiality breaches around POET's public disclosures of the order and shipping details.
In plain English: Marvell felt POET said too much in press releases, and the remedy was to walk away from the contracts.
The company says it remains focused on "executing strategic priorities" and noted a separate purchase order from another technology customer worth roughly $5 million.
That's a meaningful number for a small-cap chip play, but it's a lot smaller than the Celestial AI relationship that anchored POET's investment story.
POET says its product platform - which lets photonic and electronic devices be combined using standard semiconductor manufacturing - still has a runway in AI data center networking. The open question is whether other hyperscale customers step in to replace what just walked out the door.
Optical interconnect is one of the bottleneck markets in AI infrastructure, since moving data between chips inside an AI cluster fast enough is genuinely hard. Companies that solve it can build durable businesses with sticky customers.
But concentration risk is real, and POET disclosed Celestial AI as its anchor customer for years. Anchor customers can leave, and Monday's news is the textbook example of why diversification matters in early-stage chip names.
The broader read for investors: optical networking remains an attractive theme, but the right way to play it may be through the larger names like Marvell, Broadcom or Coherent rather than single-customer suppliers.
Marvell's filing leaves the door cracked open, with POET noting "any possible ability of the Company to re-establish its relationship with Marvell Semiconductors and to secure future product orders." Whether that door reopens is the next thing to watch.
