MicroLED: from living room to AI data centre
MicroLED is no longer a single unified market, according to Yole's latest report 'MicroLED 2026 - Applications, Markets and Competitive Landscape'. The technology has split into three families: large displays on TFT, microdisplays for AR on silicon CMOS, and, emerging over the past two years, optical interconnections inside AI data centres, also on silicon.
Yole Group’s analysts see the industry’s centre of gravity moving decisively toward the two silicon-based families.
The first wave of momentum revolved around large displays: watches, mainly Apple, and TVs, driven by Samsung. The technology could not move past assembly and yield hurdles that made its cost prohibitive for consumer markets, and Apple’s 2024 cancellation, which also hit its partners ams OSRAM, K&S, and LG Display, changed the momentum.
As of 2026, few products use microLED on TFT: expensive TVs selling a few hundred units a year, and an expensive watch selling less than ten thousand. If cost-reduction roadmaps succeed, volumes could reach about a million microLED watches and several tens of thousands of TVs by 2031, bringing the microLED-on-TFT panel market to $244 million in revenue.
Raphaël Mermet-Lyaudoz, technology and market analyst, Photonics & Display at Yole Group said: "AR is poised to be the largest short- and mid-term opportunity for the technology. Market demand is already surging in China and should reach Western OEMs’ portfolios as 2nd- and 3rd-generation display smart glasses arrive. The key differentiators, including form factor, self-emission, and high brightness, position microLED favuorably against competing microdisplays, and the uncertainties lie in the acceptance of those devices, which are now debated as the market gains mainstream visibility."
By contrast, microLED on silicon is already widely used, mostly in China, by a variety of AR glass makers. The rise of smart eyewear, pushed by Meta and pulled by AI-driven appeal, paved the way for display-based generations of glasses. These already form a sizeable market in China, where domestic players are massively adopting microLED with pixel pitches in the 2.5 to 4 µm range; however, US adoption is not expected before 2027.
With both the AR market and microLED’s share of it set to increase significantly, LEDoS display engine volumes could grow at a 121 percent CAGR over 2025-2031, and Yole Group forecasts the microLED display engine for the AR market to reach about $2.5 billion by 2031. Growth will come first from RGB three-panel solutions, then monolithic single-panel RGB, shifting value from module packaging houses toward microdisplay makers.
The third application arrives during a period of tremendous AI CapEx, where raising bandwidth and cutting power per token is paramount. Co-packaged optics has garnered considerable attention, aiming to cut power at the package level (scale-in).
Optical interconnects, including CPO, all use laser sources today, but microLED has recently emerged as a credible alternative for some applications. It is better suited to short-reach communication below one metre, which represents thirty times the rest of AI data centre bandwidth combined. Yole Group’s related report quantifies the scale of that shift: CPO optical engine revenue is forecast to grow to more than $112 billion in 2031, with scale-up applications alone capturing about 94 percent of the market.
Elliot Bouchard, technology and market analyst, Photonics & Display at Yole Group said: "Scale-in links are 100 percent copper today and are expected to be progressively replaced by optical solutions. MicroLED has several advantages over lasers, but it is the finalisation of a viable architecture that will determine its success."
