French ​chip materials maker Soitec locks customers into multi-year deals as AI wafer demand surges

French chip materials maker Soitec is locking customers into multi-year supply agreements with deposits and fixed pricing as demand surges for the wafers used in AI data centre optics, its chief executive told Reuters.

“We are using the current situation to find the right balance between the value ‌we bring and ⁠the ⁠price we can ask,” Laurent Remont said.

Soitec told investors last month that photonics-SOI revenue would more than double this financial year from slightly above $100 ​million, without saying whether that was a base case or a ceiling. That implies more than $200 million, which Remont now calls “absolutely a ​floor.”