Photonic computing company Lightmatter has unveiled Guide DR, a liquid-cooled laser network interface card (LNIC) that will help to scale co-packaged optics (CPO).

Announced last week (May 21), Lightmatter said the modular LNIC has been specifically designed to support high-bandwidth optical interconnects, including Lightmatter’s own Passage L20 offering, which was released in March of this year.

By relocating the light source from the faceplate into the chassis, Lightmatter said the Guide DR LNIC solves the faceplate scaling bottleneck that will increasingly be caused by front-panel pluggable external lasers in AI data centers.

Built to OCP Nic 3.0 dimensions, the company further claimed that the LNIC quadruples optical power density when compared to conventional External Laser Small Form Factor Pluggables (ELSFPs), supporting up to 51.2Tbps of aggregate CPO or NPO (near-packaged optics) scale-up bandwidth, with four Guide DR modules able to support up to 204.8Tbps of CPO scale-up switching bandwidth in a single 1 RU switch tray.

“With Guide DR, we are removing the physical barriers to next-generation AI infrastructure by delivering the foundational laser innovation required to scale co-packaged optics,” said Nick Harris, founder and CEO of Lightmatter. “As the industry scales from 200G ports to beyond, traditional light source solutions are hitting a wall. By integrating a high-density, liquid-cooled light source into a standard NIC form factor within the chassis, we unlock the massive optical power necessary for next-generation interconnects in a single 1 RU footprint. This architecture enables the system-level reliability hyperscale operators require, while maintaining the modularity the industry expects.”

California-based Lightmatter specializes in photonics-enabled technologies that use light instead of electrical signals for computing, meaning its chips don’t experience the same heat or resistance as traditional chip architectures. Its Passage L20 is the successor to the company’s Passage M1000 and L200 offerings, which were launched in April 2025.

Samples of Lightmatter’s Guide DR LNIC will be available in Q4 2026.