Airoha Technology Corp (達發科技), a supplier of network and communications chips, yesterday said that revenue would grow moderately this year, driven by rising demand for optical fiber chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and Ethernet chips for ground stations of low Earth orbit satellites.
Airoha, 66.41 percent owned by the world’s largest smartphone chip designer, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), reported record-high revenue last year of NT$20.93 billion (US$669.7 million), up 9.4 percent from NT$19.12 billion in 2024.
“We expect optical fiber and Ethernet chips to deliver the strongest growth. The two product lines are likely to account for about 20 percent of the company’s total revenue this year,” Airoha executive vice president M.H. Shieh (謝孟翰) told an earnings conference yesterday.
Photo courtesy of Airoha Technology Corp
Airoha expects its optical fiber chips to enjoy high-speed growth this year and over the next few years as optical fiber transceiver modules remain the top choice for AI data center operators, Shieh said.
The company plans to start volume production of a new high-speed single-lane digital signal processor (DSP) supporting 100 gigabit transmission in the middle of this year, he said.
The 100-gigabit-per-second SerDes DSP is critical for data center interconnects, enabling high-speed data transmission over a single optical lane using PAM4 technology, Shieh said.
Marvell Technology Inc and Broadcom Inc are the leading suppliers of high-speed DSPs.
Airoha expects high-speed DSPs supporting transmission speed of 400 gigabits, 800 gigabits or 1.6 terabits per second to remain the mainstream technology for optical fiber modules in the next five years, while copackaged optics (CPO) technology would support much higher-speed transmission up to 3.2 terabits per second for the main AI chips, he said.
Nvidia Corp is expected to adopt CPO technology for new AI chips to address power consumption issues.
In addition, Airoha expects rapid deployment of low Earth orbit satellites this year to fuel demand for the company’s ethernet chips used in ground stations and receivers, Shieh said.
Strong customer demand and higher average selling prices are expected to boost the revenue contribution of networking chips — fixed broadband chips, ethernet chips and optical fiber chips — from 45 percent of the total last year and 35 percent in 2024, he said.
Bluetooth chips accounted for 50 percent of the company’s revenue last year, he added.
Airoha counts major cloud service providers and optical fiber transceiver module makers among its customers.
This quarter’s revenue is expected to grow sequentially and annually, bucking the traditional downtrend in the first quarter of the year, Shieh said.
Airoha reported net profit of NT$533 million for the fourth quarter of last year, down 8.6 percent year-on-year and 35.4 percent quarter-on-quarter.
Last year’s net profit grew 8.2 percent to NT$2.83 billion from NT$2.61 billion in 2024, with earnings per share rising to NT$17.32 from NT$16.1.
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