Why Did VIAVI's CEO Call CPO Delay Rumors 'Nonsense'?

Optical component maker VIAVI pushed back directly against industry rumors of CPO delays at its Q4 earnings call on August 5. "There's been a lot of industry talk, like, 'the yield is going to be slower.' That's all nonsense. CPO is moving forward," the company said.

Viavi Solutions Q4 Earnings Call Highlights (MarketBeat, 2026-08-06)

출처: marketbeat.com

Why CPO Delay Rumors Even Exist

CPO, co-packaged optics, mounts the transceiver that converts light signals into electrical ones right next to the switch chip, cutting the wiring losses that build up over distance. As data centers grow larger, optical signals have to travel farther, and signal loss becomes a bigger problem. CPO has been positioned as the next step to solve that, but industry chatter recently held that low yields were pushing mass production back. VIAVI CEO Oleg Khaykin pushed back on that chatter directly on the call.

The Number Behind the Pushback

The pushback isn't just talk. Other figures from the same call back it up. The company said its data-center revenue more than doubled year over year, excluding the Spirent acquisition. Data-center revenue now makes up roughly half of its network segment. The CEO described CPO as "a particularly fast-growing part of the opportunity" and said 1.6-terabit transceivers could reach volume parity with 800-gigabit within 2027.

Investor Serenity read this as VIAVI and CPO test-equipment peers like FormFactor starting to book related revenue this quarter, accelerating around December. The company didn't pin down an exact figure or date, but "fast-growing part" and a doubled data-center revenue line point the same direction. Rival Ayar Labs has separately put its own CPO volume inflection point at 2028, more than a year later than what VIAVI and FormFactor are describing. Even within CPO, the timeline differs by what a company actually sells, test gear or production parts. The CEO's pushback doesn't move up the industry's overall CPO timeline. The line to watch is December. If VIAVI confirms with numbers at its next earnings call that CPO-related revenue actually accelerated, the "nonsense" pushback will have been proven by revenue, not just words. If it doesn't, the delay rumors may have been an early warning rather than baseless noise.