Ayar Labs

Holds undergraduate degrees in physics and electrical engineering from Louisiana Tech University and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. Served as a program manager at DARPA before co-founding Ayar Labs. His doctoral research produced the world's first CPU-to-memory photonic interconnect; the broader research effort at MIT and UC Berkeley from 2010 to 2015 — in which Wade was a key contributor — led directly to the company's formation. At MIT he was part of the team that first demonstrated optical I/O integrated into a silicon chip. He later served as Ayar's CTO and SVP of Engineering before becoming CEO.

Co-founded Ayar Labs based on photonic interconnect research conducted at MIT and UC Berkeley between 2010 and 2015. Served as the company's inaugural CEO, guiding early fundraising and commercial strategy for optical I/O chiplets designed to replace copper interconnects in AI and high-performance computing systems. The company's technology embeds photonic transceivers directly into chip packages, promising dramatic bandwidth and power improvements for data center networking.

A researcher and engineer whose graduate work at MIT produced seminal results in silicon photonics integration, contributing to the foundational optical I/O technology that Ayar Labs commercializes. Co-founded Ayar in 2015 alongside fellow MIT and UC Berkeley researchers. The team's core innovation — integrating photonic transceivers monolithically with CMOS logic to achieve chip-to-chip communication at optical speeds — was supported by DARPA's POEM program and forms the basis of Ayar's TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet.

Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he leads the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. His research in high-speed mixed-signal integrated circuits and silicon photonics provided the academic foundation for Ayar Labs' optical interconnect technology. He co-founded Ayar in 2015 to commercialize DARPA-funded research on integrating photonics with standard CMOS processes. Previously held a faculty position at MIT, where he co-led work resulting in the first optically connected microprocessor, demonstrated in collaboration with partners including GlobalFoundries.