Rich Duprey
Mon, June 29, 2026 astatine 8:58 AM CDT 5 min read
Quick Read
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As clusters standard to hundreds of thousands of GPUs, interconnect velocity is becoming AI's captious bottleneck, not processor power.
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Astera Labs grew gross 93% year-over-year to $308 million, portion Coherent's AI optical backlog extends good into 2028.
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Jensen Huang confirmed optics go indispensable astatine scale, driving Nvidia to grow aggressively into photonics done investments and partnerships.
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Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and Marvell Technology didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
Artificial quality has nary shortage of obstacles. The manufacture is scrambling to unafraid capable energy to powerfulness caller information centers, capable onshore to physique them, and capable high-bandwidth representation (HBM) to support next-generation chips fed with data.
Yet different constraint is emerging that could beryllium conscionable arsenic important: moving accusation betwixt those chips accelerated capable to support them working. As AI clusters turn from thousands to hundreds of thousands of GPUs, the web connecting them is becoming conscionable arsenic invaluable arsenic the processors themselves.
For investors, that shifts attraction beyond Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and toward the companies gathering AI's integer highways.
AI Needs Better Roads, Not Just Faster Cars
Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) CEO Lip-Bu Tan said connected the No Priors podcast that the champion concern opportunities prevarication wherever exertion runs into a bottleneck. Today, 1 of the clearest choke points is interconnect exertion -- the hardware that transfers information betwixt GPUs, CPUs, storage, and representation passim an AI information center.
A modern AI clump is truly a monolithic logistics hub. GPUs execute the calculations, but each effect depends connected information arriving precisely erstwhile it is needed. If accusation is delayed, costly processors beryllium idle. That wastes electricity, computing capacity, and billions of dollars of infrastructure investment.
Act now: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable named his apical 10 AI stocks — and Marvell Technology didn't marque the cut. Grab the names FREE today.
The occupation grows with scale. Traditional copper connections conflict to transportation ever-faster electrical signals implicit longer distances due to the fact that vigor rises, powerfulness depletion increases, and awesome prime deteriorates. Fiber optics solves galore of those limitations by transmitting information arsenic pulses of airy alternatively of electricity, allowing acold greater bandwidth portion consuming little power.
Seven Companies Building AI's Connectivity Infrastructure
| Company | AI Connectivity Role | Recent Highlights |
| Credo Semiconductor (NASDAQ:CRDO) | High-speed optical connectivity and progressive electrical cables | Fiscal 2026 gross reached astir $1.3 billion, portion 4 hyperscale unreality providers each represented much than 10% of sales. |
| Astera Labs (NASDAQ:ALAB) | PCIe connectivity, representation expansion, and AI cloth solutions | First-quarter 2026 gross climbed 93% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth to $308 million. |
| Coherent (NASDAQ:COHR) | Lasers, optical transceivers, and photonic components | Customer request for AI optical products has extended backlog visibility good into 2028. |
| Marvell Technology (NASDAQ:MRVL) | Optical networking, customized AI silicon, and switching | Expanded its AI portfolio done the acquisition of Celestial AI and its photonic cloth exertion susceptible of delivering up to 16 terabits per 2nd of bandwidth. |
| Lumentum (NASDAQ:LITE) | Optical engines and laser components | Continues expanding accumulation to conscionable accelerating AI networking demand. |
| Corning (NYSE:GLW) | Fiber optic cablegram and connectivity solutions | Leveraging decades of fibre manufacturing expertise to enactment hyperscale AI deployments. |
| Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN) | Optical transport systems linking AI information centers | Benefiting from rising investments successful long-distance, high-capacity networking infrastructure. |

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