One of the big advantages that POET offers is flexibility. The ability to integrate the customers choice of devices.  Different lasers will have different coupling based on the laser design. This is where POET excels in their ability to mix and match with precision. Coupling light with high efficiency between devices is something POET has perfected well ahead of the competition who have taken a long time to realize that a new approach is required. Playing catchup for them is difficult given that POET's redesign was not incremental but a complete rework from the ground up and protected by patents. At the heart of that design are the multilayer waveguides which are extremely efficient in their ability to be accurately tuned to a specific wavelength and are not restricted by real estate limitations unlike traditional silicon photonics which must be mapped out very specifically to areas of the chip where electrical requirements will not interfere. This represents a compromise in layout efficiency (roadmap detours) and the biggy is that POET's waveguides can overlap without the same crosstalk impacts caused by proximity conflicts that existing platforms have to deal with. 

My understanding is that the closest competition to POET would be Marvel's attempts to replicate what POET is doing but again they are still using old approaches and cannot reach the level of efficiency that POET has achieved after years of redesign.

To be honest my biggest concern is that because POET remains a small company they have had to allocate so much of the company resources to data transfer for AI. Meanwhile there are applications that remain as independent company makers. Suresh has done an excellent job of expanding a library of devices and applying those devices which often means collaborating with other companies who have very specific strength to do a very specific job. 

These companies know how good POETs platform is and are working with POET to have their tech applied for volume production. A POET ecosystem of part suppliers. And now they have Foxconn working with them. It is a recipe for growth that utilizes a vast industry. 

I was impressed early on by the fact that POET has been able to simulate very accurate results in their designs. That ability has obviously deepend as evidenced by  the very quick integration of new 200G EML's. New tech generally takes years of hit and miss as witnessed by Moore's Law. Shrinking the node became harder and harder with delays being the norm and more costly as time went on.

In my opinion the time has passed where POET has to buck the trend. They are becoming the trend.