Ayar Labs has brought on Sankara Venkateswaran as Vice President of Engineering, just in time as the company ramps up its solutions for mass production to power hyperscale AI workloads.
In his new role, Venkateswaran will lead the engineering team, focusing on developing Ayar Labs’ TeraPHY™ optical engines while overseeing architecture, design, and product execution.
With a track record of delivering full silicon products for networking controllers, he emphasizes efficiency, predictability, and quality, key for hyperscalers who need production-ready silicon that slots seamlessly into advanced packaging.
Bringing over 26 years of experience in mobile, compute, networking, and infrastructure silicon, Venkateswaran has held engineering and leadership roles at Atheros, Qualcomm, and Intel.
He’s led numerous product programs, nailed tape-outs across cutting-edge nodes and foundries, and at Intel served as VP of Foundational Networking Silicon Engineering, guiding global teams on Ethernet controllers and SoCs for hyperscale and enterprise clients under tight deadlines.
This hire fuels Ayar Labs’ growing momentum, including recent partnerships with Alchip and GUC.
The company is pushing forward with its co-packaged optics (CPO) technology, leading the shift from copper interconnects to a more efficient, high-performance alternative that cuts power use and costs for high-volume AI deployments.
Leadership Comments
“Sankara brings deep expertise in network acceleration silicon that perfectly complements our leadership in co-packaged optics,” said Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. “His track record building world-class engineering teams makes him the ideal leader to help us advance CPO deployment and meet the massive scaling demands of AI 
infrastructure.”
“Co-packaged optics is rapidly moving from early innovation to infrastructure necessity,” said Venkateswaran. “Ayar Labs is uniquely positioned to lead at the forefront of this transition. My focus is on delivering the most performant, compatible, and manufacturing-ready CPO solution for AI scale-up to overcome the bandwidth and power limitations of copper.”
