GlobalFoundries and Marvell Technology have announced an expanded multi-year strategic agreement to increase manufacturing capacity for silicon germanium technology at GlobalFoundries' Burlington, Vermont, facility, with the partnership targeting the surging demand for high-speed optical connectivity driven by artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout.

Expanding on a Decade-Long Partnership

The agreement, announced, builds on more than a decade of collaboration between the two companies and is expected to add significant capacity to support Marvell's growing production requirements. GlobalFoundries, listed on Nasdaq under the ticker GFS, and Marvell Technology, listed under MRVL, described the deal as a reflection of the increasingly critical role optical networking plays in enabling AI and cloud infrastructure at scale.

The expanded collaboration centers on GlobalFoundries' silicon germanium, or SiGe, technology portfolio, which the company has been manufacturing for over a decade. GlobalFoundries said it will continue investing in its technology roadmap and manufacturing capabilities in the United States and internationally to support customer growth.

Technology Targeting Next-Generation Optical Architectures

The SiGe capacity being expanded under this agreement is intended to support Marvell's production of next-generation pluggable optical transceivers, Near-Packaged Optics, known as NPO, and Co-packaged Optics, known as CPO.

These architectures are positioned as increasingly important components in modern AI data centers, which the companies describe as distributed compute systems where performance depends not only on accelerators but also on the high-speed interconnects that move data between them.

GlobalFoundries' current SiGe technology supports 200 gigabits-per-lane optical connectivity. The company said its roadmap is designed to address higher-speed generations as AI and cloud data center bandwidth requirements continue to grow. GlobalFoundries also noted that it has the capability to co-integrate SiGe, silicon photonics and advanced packaging to support new optical connectivity architectures including NPO and CPO.

The company positioned its SiGe portfolio as providing the high-frequency performance, signal integrity and power efficiency required for advanced optical networking applications, drawing on what it described as decades of high-performance radio frequency and analog leadership.

AI Infrastructure Driving Demand

Both companies pointed to the expansion of AI infrastructure as the primary force behind the agreement. As AI systems scale, moving data efficiently between components has become a central challenge, according to statements from both parties.

Optical connectivity technologies are being positioned as a key solution to that challenge, with pluggable transceivers, NPO and CPO each representing different points on the architectural spectrum between current and future data center designs.

Robb Johnson, Vice President of Foundry Technology at Marvell, said in a statement that AI is fundamentally changing the way data centers are built, and that connectivity is becoming increasingly critical to unlocking the performance of these systems. Johnson added that the industry is moving toward higher-bandwidth optical architectures, including NPO and CPO, and that Marvell is investing aggressively to lead that transition.

He said the expanded collaboration with GlobalFoundries will help ensure Marvell has the SiGe technology and manufacturing capacity to support the significant growth it anticipates.

Shankaran Janardhanan, Senior Vice President of Photonics and RF businesses at GlobalFoundries, said the agreement reinforces the long-standing relationship with Marvell and reflects the critical role SiGe technology plays in enabling high-speed optical networking for AI infrastructure. Janardhanan framed GlobalFoundries' SiGe capabilities as a direct translation of its radio frequency and analog expertise into optical performance.

Burlington Facility as a Production Hub

The agreement specifically designates GlobalFoundries' Burlington, Vermont facility as the site for the expanded SiGe capacity. GlobalFoundries operates manufacturing facilities across the United States, Europe and Asia, and describes itself as a manufacturer of essential semiconductors enabling AI applications across environments ranging from cloud infrastructure to physical-world deployments. The company serves markets including automotive, aerospace and defense, data centers, smart mobile devices and the internet of things.

The Burlington facility's role in this agreement underscores the domestic manufacturing dimension of the deal, coming as semiconductor supply chain considerations remain prominent across the industry. GlobalFoundries earlier in September 2026 finalized a USD 375 million research and development award from the U.S. Department of Commerce's CHIPS Research program to advance American quantum leadership, and separately announced a manufacturing partnership with Monolithic Power Systems to scale high-performance power solutions.

Capacity Addition Without Disclosed Financial Terms

Neither GlobalFoundries nor Marvell disclosed specific financial terms of the expanded agreement. GlobalFoundries described the expansion as expected to add significant capacity beyond existing production levels to support Marvell's growing requirements, without providing specific volume figures or dollar amounts tied to the deal.

The announcement did not include a projected timeline for when the additional capacity would come online or reach full production. GlobalFoundries noted in its release that forward-looking statements in the announcement involve risks and uncertainties and that the company undertakes no obligation to update those statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of the release unless required by law.

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