This week the bull case for optical communications got a new spokesperson: Broadcom's income statement instead of analyst decks. Demand is now locked in by earnings, but what's truly scarce can't be bought with earnings: the hardest bottleneck in the chain is a laser in short supply through 2027. The more real the demand, the more valuable the light source.

Lumentum nearly doubled revenue as EML and 1.6T products drove a 2,140 bps jump in operating margin. With demand far outstripping supply, how is Lumentum using NVIDIA's capital and new capacity to chase a $2B quarterly revenue target?

AI compute is ushering in the 3.2T optical era. We break down Mitsubishi Electric's latest paper: a 0.8 µm high-mesa EML, a Glass-AlN hybrid substrate, and wire-bond-free packaging that push modulation bandwidth past 100 GHz for next-gen CPO and GPU clusters.

AI is igniting demand for optical substrates. Driven by EML and silicon photonics, AXT's InP backlog has topped $100M. Here are the key takeaways from the latest call and how AXT plans to double capacity for the CPO era.

A not-yet-effective FCC draft rule repriced the optical supply chain in a week: Innolight plunged, Coherent soared over 40%. But the real bottleneck isn't module assembly; it's upstream EML and InP. The policy arbitrage is real, the capacity shift is slower.

Outside the silicon photonics mainstream, Mitsubishi Electric bets on III-V EMLs flip-chipped onto a glass interposer: the prototype already reaches 89 GHz, 106.25 Gbaud PAM4, and 2.37 dB TDECQ. As each lane heads toward 400 Gbps, can this high-speed path clear the hurdles of arraying and cost?

Demand broke records this week, and so did costs. The same week NVIDIA posted $96.2 billion in revenue, it told customers prices would rise 15%, and Coherent paid upfront to lock in three years of InP capacity. In 2027, optical module makers will win or lose not on whether they can build 1.6T, but on whether they have secured substrates and how much BOM budget is left for optics.

The FCC wants to move optical module orders away from China, but the Western vendors taking those orders still grow their laser dies on substrates China approves for export. 6-inch InP is up 250% with a supply gap above 70% — de-Sinicization works at the module layer, but has no answer at the materials layer yet. This week's three earnings calls and OCP's CPO move point the same way: the decisive move has shifted down to indium phosphide.

"OSFP 800G SR8" is not a part number — it is five axes stacked together. Learn form factor, data rate, reach, electrical I/O and light source, and you can read any optical module spec and see why two 800G modules can differ 3x in price. Interactive lookup tool included.

1.6T is a generational shift up from 800G. Tear down both modules side by side: DSP goes from 80 to 130, each light source costs 3-4x more, and SiPh penetration rises from 40-45% to 60%. See where cost jumps, how the bottleneck moves, and who takes the margin.