2026 Outlook with Mathew Burns of Samtec

We have been working with Matt and Samantec for the past 5 years. Samtec is a billion dollar privately-held manufacturer with a wide range of electronic interconnect products that are critical in high-speed and high-reliability systems.

Matt has been with Samtec for more than 10 very important year developing go-to-market strategies for Samtec’s Silicon-to-Silicon solutions. Over the course of 25+ years, he has been a leader in design, applications engineering, technical sales and marketing in the telecommunications, medical and electronic components industries.

Tell us a little bit about your company. It’s good to talk with you again, Dan. We are looking forward to a strong year.

Samtec designs and manufactures high-performance copper, optical, and RF interconnect solutions across industries including datacom, computer, telecommunications, semiconductors, among many others. We are also celebrating our 50th anniversary in 2026.

Personally, I lead a team of experienced content developers evangelizing Samtec’s Silicon-to-Silicon™.

What was the most exciting high point of 2025 for your company?

Well, Dan, everything in the interconnect world is getting smaller, faster, and denser. 200+ Gbps throughput is now reality, and 400+ Gbps is right around the corner. In 2025, Samtec launched our Si-Fly® HD CPC cable systems enabling 102.4T in a 95 x 95 mm chip substrate. That’s 512 lanes running 200G each. It’s also the smallest, densest solution on the market. We also demonstrated several real-world implementations of Si-Fly HD with market leaders like Broadcom and Marvell Semiconductor. Intermate able CPO solutions are coming in 2026 as well.

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2025?

In short, scaling. We’ve chatted several times in recent months that the pace of innovation, especially in AI, is accelerating. Companies small and large must do more with less. Plus, there is constant churn in the industry, especially in Silicon Valley.

How is your company’s work addressing this challenge?

We are ramping up investments where it makes sense. A good example of that is our manufacturing capabilities. Our technologists innovate smaller, flexible equipment that minimizes changeover from one product to another and supports minimum downtimes. On the personnel side, Samtec has a round peg, round hole philosophy. We are laser-focused on finding the right person for the right role while maximizing productivity using the latest AI and digital tools.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2026 will be, and why?

That’s easy. AI. Next question. Joking aside, AI infrastructure and the data center space are not slowing down anytime soon. Capital expenditure and investment from the largest hyperscalers and the emerging neoscalers are still growing. We see more growth there ‘26 vs ‘25 there. Additionally, we expect to see growth in mil/aero given unfortunate instability around the world. Commercial space is highly competitive with LEO/MEO satellite providers popping up globally.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

In a few areas. We are growing our product roadmap with new interconnect solutions while also rounding product families for new applications. New industry standards like VITA™ 90 VNX+™ and VITA 93 QMC™ are quickly being adopted in mil/aero and commercial space applications.

On the sales side, we continue to ramp up as well. Let’s use India as example. We are growing the sales, marketing, and technical support teams in key geographies. We are expanding into a new office in Bengaluru, and we are adding to our sales channels with new regional and industry-specific distribution partners.

Are you incorporating AI into your products?

Well, Dan, since most of Samtec’s interconnect solutions are passive in nature, it’s hard to incorporate AI directly into our products. Yet, products like Si-Fly HD are essential to advancing XPU scale-up and scale-out in AI infrastructure.

Is AI affecting the way you develop your products?

Yes, without a doubt. Samtec has leveraged AI in machine vision for testing and inspection of high-volume interconnect solutions for several years. AI has advanced the accuracy and speed of several MCAD and ECAD EDA tools we use for simulating new products individually and in situ. Scripting optimization is obviously easier in these EDA tools when using AI.

Additionally, Samtec is developing closed loop additive manufacturing processes using AI vision systems to ensure printed part quality during production. AI systems also increase automation in the adoption and scaling of additive manufacturing processes.

What conferences did you attend in 2025 and how was the traffic?

Samtec sponsors and attends many industry-specific, regional, and local conferences all over the globe. Example conferences include DesignCon, OFC, embedded world, PCI-SIG DevCons, IMS, European Microwave, ECOC, AI Infra, SuperComputing, New Tech, AOC, Electronica globally and more. With few exceptions, conference and trade show attendance and engagement remain strong. We really haven’t noticed any declines in the past years. If anything, I think conference attendance is still growing.

Will you participate in conferences in 2026? Same or more as 2026?

We will probably be on par in 2026 compared to 2025. There’s always some churn in conferences we sponsor annually. However, we typically support the same large events as mentioned each year.

How do customers normally engage with your company?

Dan, that’s a great question. There are many different paths to engage with Samtec. We have a global team of factory-trained Field Sales Engineers (FSEs) that are typically the front door to Samtec. They are supported technically by our growing team of FAEs who average >10 years of industry design experience. For self-service, Samtec has several design tools on samtec.com. We also extend our reach with global, regional, local, and specialty distribution partners who support our >100K direct and indirect customers in 125+ counties.

Additional comments?

Thanks, Dan, for the opportunity to talk with you and your team. We love being a part of the curated semiwiki.com ecosystem. We look forward to a strong 2026.

Also Read:

Webinar – The Path to Smaller, Denser, and Faster with CPX, Samtec’s Co-Packaged Copper and Optics

Samtec Practical Cable Management for High-Data-Rate Systems

How Channel Operating Margin (COM) Came to be and Why It Endures

Visualizing System Design with Samtec’s Picture Search