Nvidia’s $4 billion photonics bet: why its Lumentum and Coherent deals matter now
Nvidia Corp plans to pump $2 billion apiece into photonics suppliers Lumentum and Coherent, betting the move will accelerate connections inside its AI data-center platforms. The news sent Lumentum up roughly 5% and Coherent climbing 9% on Monday. This latest step zeroes in on an issue adjacent to the GPU. Photonics, which relies on light—think lasers and transceivers—to shuttle data more quickly and efficiently than old-school electrical links, comes into play as AI workloads move from training to inference, the routine process of running models to produce outputs.