MaxLinear, the Carlsbad-headquartered semiconductor company, reported $168.8 million in second-quarter 2026 revenue, a 55% increase over the same period a year earlier.

The jump was fueled by data center infrastructure spending. MaxLinear's infrastructure segment revenue hit $85 million in the quarter, up 145% year over year, according to a Zacks analysis published on TradingView. That segment is now the company's largest revenue category, led by demand for high-speed optical interconnects.

The North County Daily Star flagged MaxLinear's growth Wednesday, Sept. 2, as part of a broader look at North County business activity.

MaxLinear (Nasdaq: MXL) employs 1,115 people, according to financial data site ChartMill. The company is based along the Palomar Airport Road corridor, a stretch that houses several of Carlsbad's largest tech and life-science employers. It designs radio frequency, analog, digital and mixed-signal chips used in broadband, wireless infrastructure, data centers and industrial applications.

Its Keystone platform, a 100-gigabit-per-lane optical chip, is in high-volume production for 400G and 800G deployments at major hyperscale data center operators in the United States and Asia, according to Yahoo Finance reporting. MaxLinear says Keystone uses almost 40% less power than competing products.

The growth is broad. On Aug. 4, MaxLinear and Everspin Technologies signed a memorandum of understanding to develop next-generation memory architectures for AI servers, combining Everspin's persistent MRAM technology with MaxLinear's storage and encryption platform, according to a joint press release.

MaxLinear's Panther Storage Accelerator also won the FMS 2026 Best of Show Award in the Servers & Networking category at the Future of Memory and Storage conference in Santa Clara, held Aug. 4–6, according to Blocks and Files.

On Aug. 10, the company unveiled RackCommander, a product portfolio for managing AI data center racks. Amit D. Bavisi, senior vice president and general manager of MaxLinear's analog mixed-signal business unit, said in the announcement that "AI infrastructure is creating a new control-plane architecture that extends far beyond the traditional BMC."

MaxLinear returned to profitability in the second quarter, posting net income of $1.76 million after a net loss in the year-earlier period, according to SimplyWall St, a financial data aggregator. The company guided third-quarter 2026 revenue between $210 million and $220 million.

MaxLinear expects Panther storage-accelerator revenue to roughly double in 2026, with the potential to nearly double again in 2027, Yahoo Finance reported.