AI compute is growing 2.5X a year and electrical switching is hitting its limits. An OFC 2026 workshop showed how optical circuit switching (OCS), with its low latency and low power, is becoming a core technology for NVIDIA and the hyperscalers building next-generation AI supercomputers.

CPO is a bet on more than a dozen paths: the Big Four enter via scale-up, switch silicon, custom engines and optical I/O, while challengers stake out optical I/O chiplets, photonic interposers and microLEDs. But they share one supply chain — great specs don't guarantee a path to volume. This is a CPO scorecard.

NVIDIA proposes a symmetrical, wavelength-agnostic bidirectional silicon photonics link that uses polarization multiplexing to break CPO's port-count and cost bottlenecks. Error-free 32 Gbps bidirectional operation makes "colorless" optics a reality and paves the way for scaling AI cluster networks.

In the era of gigawatt AI factories, the network defines the computer. NVIDIA unveiled 3D-stacked silicon photonics CPO and industry-leading MRM technology to break through the power and reliability limits of AI scaling, and laid out a decade-long roadmap fusing compute and optics.

The CPO era has officially begun, with Cignal AI forecasting a $1.5B opportunity by 2030. Beyond the push from Nvidia and Broadcom, STT argues that CoS packaging for high-power lasers is the hidden barrier that will decide who wins ELSFP volume production.

At OFC 2026, NVIDIA unpacked the design core of single-lane 200Gb/s silicon photonics microring modulators. We break down 3D IC integration, inductive peaking and PN junction trade-offs - the key technology path for CPO interconnects in AI factories.

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?

When the biggest buyer reaches upstream and index providers add optical names to their benchmarks, the industry's capital structure has shifted gears. NVIDIA's $2B stake in Coherent is not an investment; it is supply insurance.

Earnings, timelines and shipment volumes all confirmed the optical bull case in the same week, yet Taiwan's silicon photonics stocks hit limit-down. This is a valuation correction, not a demand alarm, and the line between the two hinges on one sentence in next week's Broadcom earnings call.

Coherent hits its capacity-doubling target ahead of schedule. The 6-inch InP transition is now paying off, fueling 1.6T module and OCS revenue, while CPO developed in deep partnership with NVIDIA starts contributing revenue in late 2026.

The Big Four CSPs lifted 2026 capex to USD 725B, NVIDIA declared the arrival of agentic AI, and Cisco doubled its AI order outlook. Yet Chinese module makers' "revenue up, profit lagging" signal shows margin in this optical bull run shifting upstream to EML/InP and epitaxy.

NVIDIA's 32 Gb/s optical receiver reaches -18.5 dBm sensitivity at 0.416 pJ/b with an almost free trick: reusing the rail-to-rail TIA output as a noise-free DFE decision, trading under 1 mA for 2 dB of sensitivity. Why receiver sensitivity is the best investment in the whole optical link — explained figure by figure.

Direct-detection optical receivers normally use only one terminal of the PD. NVIDIA recovers the wasted cathode current to build a differential TIA, improving sensitivity by roughly √2. The TIA doubles, but laser power across the whole link drops. A figure-by-figure walkthrough of VLSI 2026 C20.2.

This week: Lumentum's revenue nearly doubles as 1.6T ramps, NVIDIA invests $2B in Coherent's InP capacity, China's NDRC blocks Meta's Manus deal, and TSMC's COUPE silicon photonics platform heads toward mass production.

NVIDIA's Larry Denison on where computing is headed: AI's expanding markets, why resource disaggregation matters, and when optical links beat copper.

After 1.6T there is no single winner: every reach has its own lowest-power answer. Two companies on this panel gave the same number — the reverse gearbox feeding slow-and-wide optics costs 4 pJ/bit, more than the optics themselves. And Oracle's field data pulled the spotlight back to the 4,096 fiber contacts on a front panel.

Microring DWDM has long been seen as the densest but hardest-to-control route. NVIDIA's ECOC 2026 paper takes "too hard to control" apart piece by piece: nine rings find nine lasers on a chip that can't see the spectrum, then re-shuffle live through an 80°C temperature drift, with even the forwarded-clock handover running at zero bit errors.

Amkor posted record revenue, driven by AI computing and advanced packaging rather than traditional smartphones. CPO joined its technology platform for the first time, and long-term deals with TSMC and NVIDIA tie it to the core of the AI supply chain.

CPO stalled for ten years not because the technology fell short, but because it wasn't yet a real problem. At OCP 2026 APAC, NVIDIA redefined CPO from "can it be built" to "can it be mass-produced," citing 10x MTBI and Spectrum-6 CPO now shipping in volume.

NVIDIA posted $96.2B in quarterly revenue, up 106% YoY, but the real signal is that its take per 1 GW of data center jumps from $25B to $40B, with the increment all in CPUs and networking. Non-hyperscale customers grew 138% YoY and NeoCloud capacity is heading from 3 GW to 8 GW in a year — that's the order pool for the optical supply chain. The cost: gross margin troughs at 71–72%.