Jabil enhances data center position with Intel Silicon Photonic line acquisition

Jabil aims to enhance its presence in the growing pluggable transceiver space by purchasing Intel’s current Silicon Photonics-based pluggable optical transceiver (“module”) product lines and developing future module generations.

Specifically, the deal will enhance its profile and capabilities in the fast-growing data center industry.  

"This deal better positions Jabil to cater to the needs of our valued customers in the data center industry, including hyperscale, next-wave clouds, and AI cloud data centers. These complex environments present unique challenges, and we are committed to tackling them head-on and delivering innovative solutions to support the evolving demands of the data center ecosystem," stated Matt Crowley, Senior Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise Infrastructure at Jabil. "This deal enables Jabil to expand its presence in the data center value chain."

Through its photonics business unit, Jabil enables other companies to reduce the complexities of developing and deploying enhanced optical networking solutions by offering complete photonics capabilities, including component design, system assembly, and streamlined supply chain management.

For the data center market, Jabil has been investing in data center infrastructure services, liquid cooling, and silicon photonics.

Crowley said Jabil is well positioned to support customers as they incorporate innovative technologies into their data centers to navigate the increasing requirements around power and cooling being driven by artificial intelligence.”

Jabil’s deal comes after Intel, in its third-quarter earnings call last week, announced its divestment of the pluggable module portion of its silicon photonics business. Intel said it made the divestment during the quarter to focus on the “higher value” component business and optical input/output solutions targeting AI infrastructure scaling.

“We are pleased to reach this agreement with a world-class supplier like Jabil. We look forward to working closely with Jabil, our customers, and our suppliers to enable a seamless transition as Intel shifts its focus to silicon photonics components for existing markets and emerging applications,” said Safroadu Yeboah-Amankwah, SVP and Chief Strategy Officer for Intel.

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