Mubadala-Backed GlobalFoundries Lands $300 Million US CHIPS Act Award for AI Photonics
MALTA, N.Y. — GlobalFoundries, the US-headquartered semiconductor foundry majority-owned by Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, has signed a letter of intent with the US Department of Commerce to receive $300 million in federal funding through the CHIPS and Science Act.
The proposed funding, administered through the CHIPS Research and Development Office, is aimed at accelerating domestic research and development in next-generation silicon photonics—a technology that uses light waves rather than traditional electrical signals to transmit massive data volumes between integrated circuits. By bypassing conventional copper wiring bottlenecks, silicon photonics can dramatically boost data transfer speeds while lowering power consumption and heat output across artificial intelligence data center clusters.
As part of a separate concurrent agreement, the US Department of Commerce will acquire an equity stake of approximately 1% in GlobalFoundries, allowing the US government and public to share in the chipmaker's financial growth.
GlobalFoundries plans to deploy the R&D capital across its existing manufacturing facilities in Malta, New York, and Burlington, Vermont. The research will advance the company's Silicon Photonics Co-Packaged Advanced Light Engine (SCALE™) platform, targeting data transfer speeds of up to 400 gigabits per second and achieving up to a five-fold improvement in energy efficiency compared to current-generation systems.
"Silicon photonics is essential to AI infrastructure," Tim Breen, Chief Executive Officer of GlobalFoundries, said in a statement. "For a decade, the industry talked about the shift from copper to optical as something that was coming—today it is here, moving data at higher bandwidth and improved power efficiency as workloads grow more complex."
"With today's compute supply chain investments, the Trump administration is accelerating America's innovation engine," Howard Lutnick, US Secretary of Commerce, said in a statement. "These strategic investments will enhance our country's domestic capabilities, create high-paying jobs and keep America at the forefront of the semiconductor industry."
The investment seeks to re-shore critical components of the optical semiconductor supply chain, which remains heavily concentrated overseas with manufacturers like Taiwan's TSMC and Israel's Tower Semiconductor.
Mubadala Investment Company currently retains an approximate 73% controlling stake in GlobalFoundries after executing a $2 billion block trade on May 26 involving 22 million shares.
