MaxLinear Raises 2026 Optical Revenue Guidance to $230 Million as 800-Gig Ramp Outpaces Expectations, Charts Path to 1.6T Rushmore in 2027
Q2 2026 earnings call, July 23, 2026
MaxLinear delivered its clearest signal yet that the company's multiyear data center bet is paying off, posting 55% year-over-year revenue growth and raising its full-year 2026 optical data center revenue outlook to a range of $210 million to $230 million, an increase of roughly $50 million from prior guidance. CEO Kishore Seendripu called the results the "beginning of a multiyear growth phase," and the numbers back up the rhetoric: infrastructure revenue, now the company's largest category, grew 145% year-over-year to approximately $85 million in the quarter, driven entirely by the company's Keystone PAM4 DSP family ramping into 800-gigabit deployments at hyperscale customers.
Guidance Raise Is All Keystone, Not Yet the Newer Products
Analysts pressed management on the source of the upgraded outlook, and the answer was unambiguous. When Benchmark Company's Cody Acree asked whether the $50 million increase in optical guidance reflected any contribution from newer products like Washington or Annapurna, Seendripu was direct: "That's correct, Cody. That's very correct. It's all driven by Keystone product family." That matters for investors because it means the entire raise is coming from a single, already-proven product line — leaving Rushmore, Washington, and Annapurna as incremental upside still to come rather than already baked into numbers.
CFO Steve Litchfield added that order visibility now extends roughly six months out, driven by tight supply and rising demand, giving management confidence in the raise. The company also disclosed it is prepaying wafers to secure capacity, a practice Litchfield said would continue into the third quarter "against a product that has backlog out a couple of quarters."
Only Three Players Make This DSP, and MaxLinear Is One
Perhaps the most notable competitive claim on the call came when Seendripu described MaxLinear's position in optical PAM4 DSPs bluntly: "If you really look at the larger picture in the larger landscape today with the track record of the millions of units of shipments and optical transceiver, PAM4 DSPs, there are only 3 players right now, and we are one of them." He also quantified the technical edge behind Keystone, MaxLinear's 100-gigabit-per-lane, 5-nanometer CMOS PAM4 DSP and SerDes platform, saying it delivers "almost 40% lower consumption in power than competition" — a differentiator management believes is reinforcing MaxLinear's design-win momentum across both 400-gig and 800-gig deployments in the U.S. and Asia.
Rushmore and the 1.6-Terabit Opportunity Take Shape
Management laid out a clearer roadmap for Rushmore, the company's next-generation 1.6-terabit optical PAM4 DSP operating at 200 gigabit per lane, which is now sampling and moving through customer qualification. Seendripu told analysts that Keystone's broad footprint across optical module makers has effectively paved the way for Rushmore: "We are now comprehensively designed across the board of all of the optical module players on the 800 gigabit solution... Keystone has created the footprint for us to roll out 1.6 terabit." Initial Rushmore revenue is expected in the second half of 2027, with a more meaningful ramp in 2028 and 2029. Notably, Seendripu does not expect Rushmore to cannibalize Keystone, arguing that both 800-gigabit and 1.6-terabit speeds will serve as "workhorse speed nodes for a long time to come."
The company is also broadening its footprint beyond DSPs with Washington, a standalone 200-gigabit-per-lane TIA platform, and Annapurna, a 200-gigabit-per-lane Ethernet retimer aimed at active electrical cables and onboard retimer applications inside AI server racks. Both are expected to generate initial revenue in 2027, with volume ramps in 2028 — meaning the current guidance raise likely understates the medium-term opportunity if these products convert design wins into production the way Keystone did.
Margins Improving Faster Than Expected
The favorable mix shift toward infrastructure is showing up directly in profitability. MaxLinear guided third-quarter non-GAAP gross margin to 60% at the midpoint, which Litchfield acknowledged was "a little ahead of schedule." GAAP EPS turned positive for the first time in some time at $0.02, with non-GAAP EPS of $0.35. Litchfield reaffirmed the company's long-term gross margin target of 65% remains intact, while operating margin — already approaching 30% in the current quarter — is tracking toward the company's stated long-term range of 30% to 35%. Management did flag rising wafer, packaging, and test costs as an ongoing offset, saying the company is "paying a little bit more right now" to secure supply, though pricing power and mix are expected to keep margins moving higher.
Customer Concentration Is Coming, Just Not Yet
MaxLinear still has no 10%-plus customer, a detail that surprised some analysts given the scale of the optical ramp. Litchfield acknowledged this is likely to change: "I do think you'll see a little more concentration as we move forward. I mean there's not tons of these customers... you'll see some more concentration as we move forward." Growth in the quarter and in guidance is coming from both U.S. and Asian hyperscalers and module makers, with management declining to name specific customers.
Beyond Optical: Storage, Broadband, and Industrial Recovery
Away from the headline optical story, MaxLinear's Panther storage accelerator family is expected to roughly double in revenue this year and nearly double again in 2027, positioned by Seendripu as a play on agentic AI workloads that are increasingly bottlenecked by storage and memory bandwidth. In broadband, the company said it has now won business with the top two North American telecom operators on fiber PON, with the second customer ramping this year, though a crossover point where fiber revenue surpasses cable-driven DOCSIS revenue may not arrive until 2027 or even 2028. Industrial and multimarket revenue is recovering off a weak 2025 base, aided by improving China pricing, though it remains roughly half of the run rate the segment achieved back in 2023.
Taken together, the quarter reinforces a narrative MaxLinear has been building for several quarters — that its bet on advanced-node PAM4 DSPs is translating into real hyperscaler traction — while also making clear that the current guidance raise is a single-product story. The multi-year growth case now hinges on whether Rushmore, Washington, and Annapurna can replicate Keystone's qualification-to-volume trajectory starting in 2027.