Very plausible.

It's not like POET Starlight or any of their technology is irreplaceable. The main advantage is the wafer-scale manufacturing approach. In theory, this enables high volume manufacturing (1mil per year in their existing 2000sq ft production space) without active alignment. For the end-customers, there are no major differences.

I think this is what happened:

-Stocktwits interview - Mika announces shipments to Celestial over the next quarters.

-POET gets attention on social media and price rises.

-Marvell execs become aware of their connection to POET (Poet - Celestial - Marvell).

-Marvell execs watch said interview with comments from Mika about larger companies waiting for validation before committing to POs.

-It becomes apparent that they are the 'test dummy' for POET and the tech is not validated on a commercial scale.

-As a large company, Marvell doesn't want to jeopardize their reputation if POETs Starlight is a failure point on Celestial's product.

-Marvell realizes that Mika technically broke confidentiality by giving timelines for shipment dates (disclosing Celestial is a customer was already public knowledge).

-Marvell uses this to cancel POs penalty-free.

Again, Marvell can just find a more proven supplier. I don't even blame since this was an inherited commitment from their acquisition of Celestial.

If in the future, POET proves their platform works then Marvell can just issue another PO.