Optical Interconnect & DCI

Meta announced Petal on Sept. 21, a roughly 4,300-mile subsea cable connecting the U.S. and France that is expected to enter service in 2029 and will be the first to deliver petabit-scale capacity across an ocean. The cable will carry 1 petabit per second, or about 125,000 gigabytes per second, double what today's most advanced transoceanic cables can handle, using two-core fiber that fits two light paths inside each strand. Petal is one piece of a much larger seafloor empire: Meta says it has invested in more than 20 subsea cable projects touching every continent except Antarctica, led by Project Waterworth, announced in February 2025, which will stretch more than 31,000 miles and connect the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, India, and other regions across five continents. Petal is being developed with Japan's NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries, with French telecom Orange handling the landing on France's Atlantic coast, while Waterworth will be wholly owned by Meta, only its third solely owned cable according to telecom research firm TeleGeography. Meta has not disclosed what Petal or Waterworth will cost, but TechCrunch reported before Waterworth's announcement that the project could top $10 billion, a small slice of the company's expected capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion this year, nearly double the $72.2 billion it spent in 2025.

Coherent shares jumped 10.5% in the afternoon session after Bernstein rated the materials and photonics company Outperform with a $350 price target, citing optical-module upside as data-center switches move to higher speeds. According to Streetinsider, Bernstein framed $350 as roughly 24% upside, valuing the stock at 22 times estimated 2028 earnings per share of $16, and argued optical-module demand should keep expanding with faster networking gear. Citi commentary tagging Coherent as an AI hardware beneficiary reinforced the bullish AI-infrastructure read-across, alongside investor focus on Coherent's PhotonLink optics platform and an AI security demo amid a broader bid in networking names. The move follows a 5.2% gain two days earlier on news that Coherent demonstrated scalable physical-layer security for artificial intelligence infrastructure developed alongside CUbIQ Technologies. Coherent is up 63.1% since the start of the year, but at $317.01 per share it still trades 25.7% below its 52-week high of $426.89 from June 2026.

Optical networking stocks rallied Thursday after Bernstein initiated coverage of the group with an Outperform rating, calling the companies structural AI winners. Coherent jumped 11%, Lumentum rose 7%, Ciena gained 7%, and Arista added 0.4%. Coherent led the move after launching PhotonLink, an optics platform for AI infrastructure that packages its services, photonics technologies, and components including lasers, fibers, and detectors into one platform for AI data centers. The company said it already has 20 customer engagements split between co-packaged optic and near-packaged optic assemblies, plus five engagements in emerging chip-to-chip connectivity. The gains extend a strong 2026 rally for the group, with Coherent up 73%, Lumentum up 183%, Ciena up 62%, and Arista up 56% year to date.

Volantis, a semiconductor company building a new category of AI inference system, announced an $88 million Series A co-led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with participation from John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic and Susa Ventures, plus angel investors Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao and Sholto Douglas. The company's first system, A-1, is being designed to run models exceeding 20 trillion parameters at up to 10,000 tokens per second per user while reducing inference cost per token. Volantis says A-1 will increase memory capacity and bandwidth simultaneously by nearly two orders of magnitude, using a photonic interconnect that connects compute chips to memory and aggregates the bandwidth of large numbers of memory chips into a unified pool. The architecture uses custom micro-VCSELs rather than external lasers, drawing on the existing gallium arsenide VCSEL supply chain and avoiding indium phosphide supply constraints, with end-to-end links consuming less than one picojoule per bit. The financing will support development and commercialization of A-1 and its photonic memory architecture, including expanding the engineering team, and Volantis plans to deliver its first integrated inference engines to customers in 2027.

CScale exited stealth, announcing $145 million in Series C funding to accelerate development and commercialization of optical interconnect for AI scale-up, bringing the company's total funding to $188 million. The round was co-led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, and Premji Invest, with Sutter Hill Ventures continuing its support alongside existing investor Maverick Silicon. NVIDIA and Intel Capital joined as CScale's first strategic investors. The Palo Alto company is architecting its interconnect to contain optical failures without interrupting compute, targeting the gigawatt-class AI data centers expected by the end of the decade, where a single scale-up domain will span thousands of tightly coupled accelerators across dozens of racks. CEO Martin Lund said lasers will fail but compute should not, and Atreides Management Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer Gavin Baker said every optical failure is a compute failure at that scale.

Nokia Oyj shares rose 3% to $10.98 on September 9 after Google announced a €13 billion investment to expand its AI infrastructure and cloud footprint in Hamina, Finland. Google said its Hamina site, part of a 43-region network, lets local entities like Nokia deliver high-performance, low-latency services and scale AI solutions, though the announcement is not a direct contract win for Nokia. In Q2 2026, Nokia recorded a 105% year-over-year surge in net sales to AI and Cloud customers, supported by €2.8 billion in AI and Cloud order intake, while its Network Infrastructure division grew 12%, led by a 20% jump in Optical Networks and a 16% rise in IP Networks. Nokia closed Q2 2026 with €2.8 billion in net cash and interest-bearing financial investments, but the quarter also brought a reported operating loss of €50 million, a negative 1.0% reported operating margin, and a 95% year-over-year decline in reported profit to €5 million. Management said supply remains the main industry constraint relative to strong demand, and Nokia must manage negative short-term free cash flow, restructuring costs, and optical supply limits to convert hyperscaler demand into sustainable earnings growth.

Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd has broadened its ZeroFlap optical transceiver offerings with a new 224G-based lineup targeting 1.6T port speeds for AI infrastructure. The new transceivers extend Credo's established 800G ZeroFlap reliability architecture to higher-speed 1.6T deployments across 2xDR4, 2xFR4, and DR8 form factors, and combine the company's 224G per lane optical DSP, its Kfir200 silicon photonics-based photonic integrated circuit, and its latest generation PILOT diagnostic and analytics platform. Credo is betting the lineup will capture a larger share of the AI data center interconnect segment, with experts projecting 1.6T optical transceiver shipments to expand through 2027. The company faces pricing pressure from rival optical transceiver and DSP providers chasing the same 1.6T opportunity, execution risk in scaling the integrated silicon photonics and DSP platform, and customer concentration, with its two largest customers accounting for 71% of fiscal Q1 2027 revenue. Institutional sentiment has strengthened, with 86 hedge funds holding positions by the end of Q2 2026 versus 59 in Q1 2026, while BlackRock is the largest institutional owner with 17.76 million shares, or 9.45% of outstanding shares, as of June 30.

Evercore ISI upgraded Ciena Corporation to Outperform with a higher price target, citing the company's position as a dedicated optical systems provider for AI data centers. The upgrade came alongside a special call in which analysts highlighted Ciena's strong positioning in optical networking as artificial intelligence infrastructure expands across global data centers, and it was reinforced by upward earnings estimate revisions pointing to growing confidence that Ciena can capture rising demand for high-bandwidth AI connectivity. Ciena's narrative projects $11.1 billion in revenue and $1.8 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 25.8% yearly revenue growth and a $1.4 billion earnings increase from $438.3 million today, and yields a $551.86 fair value, a 55% upside to its current price. Some of the lowest ranked analysts were already assuming revenue of about US$10.3 billion and earnings of roughly US$1.5 billion by 2029, yet still see sharper risks from commoditization and hyperscaler bargaining power than the consensus does. The biggest risk remains Ciena's dependence on a small group of hyperscaler and telco customers, whose spending plans can shift quickly.

IOWN, the next-generation communications infrastructure using cutting-edge optical technology that NTT is researching and developing, is accelerating moves toward practical application. The technology replaces electrical signals with optical signals for information transmission and processing, achieving high capacity, low latency, and low power consumption, with full-scale adoption and social implementation targeted for around 2030. NTT Chief Executive Fellow and IOWN Global Forum Chairman Takehiko Kawazoe, who named the IOWN concept and heads the international promotion organization, pointed out that internet latency and the concentration of profits among a handful of giant IT companies create problems in fields such as autonomous driving, telemedicine, and national security, and expressed the view that 'AI sovereignty' must be protected through IOWN's characteristic ability to physically separate optical wavelengths by industry and by country. For broader adoption, the IOWN Global Forum, established in January 2020, now has nearly 175 member organizations, and NTT is pursuing collaboration with a diverse range of companies rather than going it alone. Kawazoe explained that the world's first invented optical transistor can theoretically operate on one-hundredth the energy of conventional technology, and even at the current stage can cut required energy to one-eighth, saying that delivering AI's value while curbing power consumption will lead to a sense of acceptance toward innovation.

Semtech shares jumped 2.8% in pre-market trading after analyst Jay Goldberg initiated coverage of the semiconductor company with a Buy rating and a $200 price target, citing expanding demand across artificial intelligence data-center infrastructure. According to TipRanks, the target implied roughly 18% upside from the previous closing price. In a note to clients, Goldberg wrote that Semtech has reinvented itself by moving away from its troubled legacy connectivity business to focus on data-center optical solutions, and highlighted that rising artificial intelligence workloads should provide a multi-year growth catalyst for its optical products through 2027 and 2028 as cloud providers expand high-speed data transmission capacity between computing clusters. After the initial pop, the shares cooled down to $178.25, up 2.1% from the previous close. Semtech is up 137% since the beginning of the year and is trading close to its 52-week high of $185 from September 2026.

Teradyne has introduced Iris 100, a production-ready optical test platform for microLED devices used in augmented-reality displays and optical interconnects for AI data centers, expanding its AI test portfolio against KLA Corporation and Cohu. The system measures individual emitters across arrays containing millions of microLEDs and integrates with Teradyne's UltraFLEXplus platform for combined optical and electrical testing, supporting wafer and final testing with advanced parallelization and image processing for high-throughput production. AI-driven revenues represented more than 60% of Teradyne's second-quarter 2026 revenues, while total revenues surpassed $1.3 billion, more than doubling year over year. Within that quarter, Semi Test revenues increased 128% year over year, compute revenues surged nearly 600%, and Product Test revenues rose 26% to $107 million. For the third quarter of 2026, Teradyne expects revenues in the range of $1.20-$1.30 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 earnings is pegged at $9.10 per share, unchanged over the past 30 days and suggesting 129.80% year-over-year growth, while Teradyne shares have surged 101% year to date.

Semtech shares have climbed about 20.3% in the month since its last earnings report, outperforming the S&P 500. The company posted second-quarter fiscal 2027 non-GAAP earnings of 71 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 14.5% and management's guidance of 61 cents, with revenue of $341.9 million topping the consensus by 4.1% and rising 32.7% year over year. Within that total, infrastructure sales reached $123.7 million, or 36.2% of net sales, up 69% year over year on data center strength, while industrial sales were $178.9 million, or 52.3% of net sales, up 25.1%, and high-end consumer sales were $39.3 million, or 11.5% of net sales, down 4.6%. LoRa-enabled sales set a record at $58 million, up 58% year over year, and the company expects 1.6T FiberEdge market share to exceed 50% by the end of fiscal 2027. For the third quarter of fiscal 2027, Semtech guided net sales to $410 million, plus or minus $5 million, with non-GAAP earnings of $1.05 per share, plus or minus 3 cents, and a non-GAAP gross margin of 58.3%.

Seaport Research Partners initiated coverage on Marvell Technology with a Buy rating and a $270 price target, citing AI data-center demand for its custom silicon and interconnect businesses. Seaport said Marvell's optical connection technologies are used in accelerator platforms including those from Nvidia, giving the company access to ongoing data center expansion. The firm projected a current quarter non-GAAP gross margin of 58.25% to 59.25%, compared with 59.4% a year ago, and expects operating leverage to come mostly from managing operating expenses rather than meaningful gross-margin expansion. Seaport also started coverage on Semtech with a $200 target, saying its increasing focus on data-center optical devices should drive AI-related demand in 2027 and 2028. On Semiconductor received a $100 objective based on growing industrial and automotive demand with an expected 800-volt data-center build-out, and Seaport also liked ON's planned acquisition for Synaptics.

Stifel reiterated a Buy rating and a $350 price target on Marvell Technology after meeting with executives at the ECOC 2026 optical communications conference in Malaga, Spain. Marvell told the firm it expects to sample 2nm products at the end of 2026, with production ramping in the second half of 2027 across PAM4 and coherent and coherent-lite modulation. Management argued that securing 2nm capacity, not just access to the node, is what sets it apart, and Stifel flagged pluggable optical modules as potentially underappreciated, with unit volume expectations rising across scale-up, scale-out and scale-across networks. Separately, Marvell has expanded its silicon-germanium capacity with GlobalFoundries to support its lead in transimpedance amplifiers, and management sees its XPU Attach business, the components that connect to custom AI processors, as a potentially bigger opportunity than the processor market itself, a case it may lay out at its October 6 Investor Day. Marvell shares were down 0.58% in premarket.

MACOM Technology Solutions announced a 3.2-terabit optical chipset on September 17, built around eight 448-Gbps PAM-4 channels. A day later, BMO Capital upgraded the shares to Outperform with a $335 target, arguing that a 36% decline from the May peak had compressed MACOM's forward valuation to roughly 29 times earnings while data-center fundamentals remained intact. The new platform combines drivers, photodiodes and transimpedance amplifiers for next-generation optical modules, and the company says the components are already available rather than merely a research roadmap. The development puts Coherent Corp. directly in the conversation, since both companies supply the optical connectivity needed to keep larger AI clusters fed with data, though Coherent brings much greater scale in data-center optics. Hedge fund positioning diverged in the second quarter: MACOM ownership rose to 59 hedge funds from 45 in the first quarter, while Coherent ownership fell to 105 funds from 114. About 2.96 million MACOM shares were sold short at the August 31 settlement date, equal to roughly 3.9% of float with 2.4 days to cover.

SMT shares surged 7.63%, or 0.45 baht, to 6.35 baht on trading value of 284.40 million baht, leading the electronics group higher across the board. KCE rose 1.49% to 68.00 baht, HANA gained 1.47% to 51.75 baht, DELTA added 1.19% to 255 baht, and CCET climbed 1.12% to 9.05 baht. Yuanta Securities (Thailand) said Star Microelectronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or SMT, posted second-quarter 2026 results that clearly reflect a recovery in revenue, capacity utilisation, and margins. The company guided 2026 revenue of no less than 2.6 billion baht and expects growth of more than 10% in 2027, or above 3 billion baht. It sees Optical and OSAT as new growth engines driven by AI. Although AI-related revenue still accounts for less than 5% of current revenue, it has the potential to rise to at least 10% next year. On valuation, the stock currently trades at a PER of about 19 times, significantly below the group's 28 to 58 times. The broker maintained its end-2027 target price of 7.60 baht per share, based on a PER of 25 times, and kept its 2026 normal profit forecast at 150 million baht, a turnaround from a loss of 146 million baht in 2025, before rising to 256 million baht in 2027, up 70% year on year.

Corning, Qualcomm and Lumentum plan to showcase a high-density die to die optical connectivity solution at ECOC 2026. The joint demo targets AI scale up architectures that require higher bandwidth, lower latency and tighter power budgets for chip interconnects, and the ECOC 2026 presentation will highlight massively parallel optical D2D links paired with high density fiber to support advanced AI data centers. The project taps Corning's existing role supplying fiber and optical technology to large infrastructure buyers rather than representing a completely new line of work, positioning its multimode fiber alongside Qualcomm's interface IP and Lumentum's VCSEL engines. The unresolved piece is commercial proof: the clearest early sign that this direction is working will be whether Corning starts pointing to concrete D2D or co packaged optics wins in its AI focused optical order book or in follow on agreements tied to the 2027 to 2032 style long term fiber deals already in place.

GlobalFoundries Inc. is expanding its photonics presence through a new partnership with SMART Photonics. The collaboration will offer an open-access manufacturing service combining silicon and indium phosphide photonics, helping customers develop next-generation optical products that move data faster and more efficiently. The move builds on accelerating demand for optical networking technologies in AI and data center applications: in the second quarter of 2026, GlobalFoundries' communications infrastructure and data center business recorded 62% year-over-year revenue growth, its seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. The company works with four of the five largest optical transceiver players and is moving toward 1.6 terabit and 3.2 terabit optical modules, with production of its 200-gigabit-per-lane technology already underway. The financial contribution from the SMART relationship will likely take some time to show up in results, though strong AI and optical networking demand is expected to boost the photonics portfolio in the long run.

Analog Devices Chief Financial Officer Rich Puccio said the company expects demand strength across its portfolio to support double-digit growth into fiscal 2027, citing a broad industrial recovery alongside continued momentum in data centers, aerospace and defense, and automated test equipment. Speaking with JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur at the firm's 2026 U.S. All Stars Conference in London, Puccio said aerospace and defense, automated test equipment, and data centers account for roughly 30% of the company's business and have been growing at high rates. The aerospace and defense business was nearing a $2 billion annualized revenue run rate as of the fiscal third-quarter exit rate, up from approximately $1 billion a year earlier, while the automated test equipment business was operating at an annualized run rate of about $1 billion and the data center business is running at about $2 billion annually, split roughly equally between power and optical products and growing about 100% year over year. Puccio declined to provide a mid-quarter bookings update or formal guidance for the January quarter but said Analog Devices expects to perform better than its normal seasonal pattern, in which the first fiscal quarter is typically down in the mid-single digits sequentially. He said more than half of the company's industrial subsegments remain double digits below the consumption line, that the company guided for a record gross margin in the fourth quarter, and that its pending acquisition of Alif Semiconductor is not expected to be material to revenue or costs in the near term, with the business more likely to ramp beginning around 2028.

Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd has had its Toucan Gen6x16 PCI Express retimer officially added to the PCI-SIG Integrators List after completing testing at the PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop, where it achieved formal PCI-SIG 6.x compliance at 64.0 GT/s. The listing validates Toucan's interoperability, electrical compliance and protocol credentials in high-speed connectivity and reduces qualification and customer integration risk. Toucan uses Credo's PILOT software to combine PCIe 6.0 with DSP-based SerDes technology, deep diagnostics and low-power operation, targeting high-performance computing and artificial intelligence environments, and Credo says the architecture aligns with PCIe 7.0 roadmaps. Credo also points to its recent acquisition of DustPhotonics, which adds silicon photonics to its DSP, SerDes and system integration stack and is expected to make the combined optical portfolio a significant growth driver in FY27. Credo faces competitive pressure as other retimer vendors pursue PCI-SIG compliance, and adoption timing depends on GPUs, CPUs and platform vendors shifting to the new standard.

Marvell Technology unveiled industry-first 2nm optical interconnect solutions for AI data centers at ECOC 2026 on 21 September 2026. The new 2nm products target higher bandwidth for AI clusters and aim to support growing data movement inside hyperscale facilities, with Marvell highlighting power efficiency features and integrated security for AI networking workloads. The launch spans 2nm 400G-per-lane PAM4, 800G ZR/ZR+ with MACsec and 1.6T ZR demos, extending Marvell's presence across both inside-the-rack links and data center interconnect. Marvell Technology develops semiconductor solutions that move and process data across data centers and network edges, and it already operates at a scale that reflects its US$214.2b market value. The company said the next proof points will be design wins and production ramps rather than demos, with investors watching attach rates into 1.6T and 3.2T switches, adoption of the 800G ZR/ZR+ pluggables with MACsec in hyperscale networks, and customer wins tied to the 102.4 Tbps CPO platform over the next product cycles.

Barclays initiated coverage of Tower Semiconductor with an Overweight rating and a $310 price target in a September 18 research note, citing the company's position in the silicon photonics foundry market. Tower Semiconductor has already secured approximately $1.3 billion in contracted business to supply chips for optical connectivity in AI data centers, announced in May, along with roughly $290 million in customer advance payments to support production demand for its silicon photonics business. The company holds a leading position in the pluggable optical market and is expanding into Silicon Photonics, Silicon Germanium, and advanced packaging as AI data center deployments accelerate. Hedge fund interest rose to 64 holders in the second quarter from 54 in the first, while short interest stood at about 2.23% of shares as of August 31. Risks include customer concentration, intensifying competition in next-generation optical connectivity, and any slowdown in hyperscaler capital spending.

Marvell Technology shares jumped 6.1% in the afternoon session after the networking chips designer announced it will showcase industry-first 2nm optical interconnect demonstrations for artificial intelligence data center connectivity at the European Conference on Optical Communication 2026. The showcase in Málaga, Spain features 2nm 400G-per-lane optical PAM4, 800G ZR and ZR+ pluggables, 1.6T ZR technology, and a 102.4-terabit co-packaged optics platform designed to scale AI data centers. Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore raised his price target on Marvell Technology to $268 from $246 ahead of the company's October 6 Investor Day, citing scale-up connectivity opportunities and an expanding custom silicon partnership with Google. The shares closed the day at $257.14, up 5.5% from the previous close.

Fuxin Technology released after market close on September 22 its plan for a 2026 private placement of A-shares to specific investors, with total funds to be raised not exceeding 270 million yuan. This is the company's first refinancing since its listing on the STAR Market in April 2021. After deducting issuance expenses, the proceeds will be allocated to three projects. The miniature semiconductor thermoelectric cooling device production and construction project has a total investment of 202 million yuan, of which 150 million yuan will come from the raised funds. The technological transformation and informatization upgrade project has a total investment of 53.81 million yuan, of which 40 million yuan will come from the raised funds. Another 80 million yuan will be used to replenish working capital. The Micro TEC project will be implemented by the controlling subsidiary Guangdong Fuxin Thermoelectric Device Technology Company within its existing plant in Shunde District, Foshan City, with a construction period of three years. Once completed and at full production, it will add annual Micro TEC capacity of 42 million units. The company said that AI computing power development has driven explosive demand for high-speed optical modules, and Micro TEC, as the core temperature control component for optical modules, has seen surging demand. In the first half of 2026, Micro TEC sales revenue in the communications sector reached 56.16 million yuan, up 145.96 percent year on year. Products for 400G and 800G high-speed data communication optical modules are already in mass supply, 1.6T products are in small-batch supply, and products for co-packaged optics technology are in the sampling and verification stage. The issuance targets no more than 35 specific investors through competitive bidding, with the issue price not lower than 80 percent of the average stock trading price over the 20 trading days before the pricing base date. The number of shares issued will not exceed 30 percent of the total share capital before the issuance, and subscribed shares may not be transferred within six months from the end of the issuance.

ams OSRAM unveiled a breakthrough 850 nm Thin-Film VCSEL platform for AI scale-up interconnects and is demonstrating a connectorized multi-core fiber solution with BizLink at ECOC 2026 in Malaga. The platform combines top-emission Thin-Film VCSELs, dense 25 m pitch microVCSEL arrays with addressability, silicon TSV integration and compatibility with standard multimode fiber infrastructure, and the company has completed microVCSEL integration on silicon TSV substrates with error-free 32 Gb/s NRZ operation at an energy efficiency of approximately 0.25 pJ/bit. Reliability testing showed no failures after more than 2,000 hours under elevated junction temperatures and current overstress conditions. BizLink joins ams OSRAM's wide-and-slow optical interconnect ecosystem as a specialist in optical connectivity and connector solutions, supporting the ECOC 2026 demonstrator, which will be shown in a private setting for selected customers and industry partners. The technology builds on the same core platform behind EVIYOS, and ams OSRAM is advancing fully integrated 3D photonics stacks combining microVCSEL arrays, micro-photodiode arrays and mixed signal CMOS electronics.

Coherent on Monday announced the launch of PhotonLink, an integrated optics platform aimed at next-generation AI datacenters. The platform gives customers access to both individual components and complete optical assemblies from a single partner, which the company said helps simplify system design, streamline qualification and reduce the complexity of integrating technologies from multiple suppliers. PhotonLink supports co-packaged optics, near-packaged optics and emerging chip-to-chip connectivity. It brings together Coherent's portfolio of critical photonics technologies along with precision assembly and test capabilities, with vertical integration spanning compound semiconductor materials, lasers, optics and specialty fiber through final assembly and test.

Marvell Technology unveiled three 2-nanometer optical technologies aimed at easing one of AI infrastructure's biggest pressure points: moving more data through increasingly crowded networks. The lineup stretches from 400-gigabit-per-second-per-lane PAM4 technology built for 3.2-terabit connectivity to an 800-gigabit ZR/ZR+ pluggable with integrated MACsec encryption and 1.6-terabit coherent links spanning data-center connections. Marvell is also showing a 102.4-terabit-per-second co-packaged-optics platform among 38 demonstrations at ECOC. Shares climbed approximately 3.4% to $252.39 Monday, a level 109.07% above the $120.72 GF Value. The company's latest quarter produced $2.739 billion of revenue, up 37%, while data-center sales jumped 46%, though the next test is execution through customer design wins, production schedules, shipment volumes and margins.

Qualcomm shares jumped approximately 7% to $190.085 after the chip designer disclosed an AI-infrastructure partnership with Amazon that could see the e-commerce and cloud giant purchase as much as $60 billion of Qualcomm products. Under the arrangement, Amazon would receive purchase-linked warrants valued at roughly $4 billion, equivalent to about 6.7% of the potential $60 billion purchasing ceiling. The two companies are also building custom inference silicon and optical connectivity capable of reaching 1.6 terabits per second. The deal gives Qualcomm a credible path to becoming a larger supplier inside hyperscale AI infrastructure rather than remaining overwhelmingly tied to mobile chips. At $190.085, Qualcomm trades 8.3% above its $175.52 GF Value estimate, suggesting the market is already pricing in part of the Amazon opportunity.

Credo Technology Group Holding Ltd. expects fiscal 2027 revenues to grow more than 85% year over year, with the Zacks Consensus Estimate calling for revenues of $2.5 billion and earnings of $6.23 per share. Near-term guidance also points higher, with fiscal second-quarter revenues projected at $525 million to $535 million, compared with $479 million in the first quarter, when revenues rose 114.7% year over year. Active Electrical Cables remain Credo's largest business unit, but management projects more than $600 million in fiscal 2027 optical revenues, with ZeroFlap optics, silicon photonics PICs and optical DSPs each expected to contribute more than $100 million. First-quarter fiscal 2027 non-GAAP gross margin was 68%, operating margin reached 48.2% and net margin was 49.3%, while management expects non-GAAP operating expenses to rise about 55% in fiscal 2027. The stock trades at 11.1X forward 12-month sales, compared with 5.0X for the Zacks sub-industry and 6.1X for the Zacks sector, and the four largest end customers generated 33%, 28%, 13% and 10% of first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenues, with the top two accounting for 61%.

Wall Street analysts issued a fresh round of ratings changes, led by an upgrade of Ciena and a downgrade of Flutter Entertainment. Evercore ISI upgraded Ciena to Outperform from In Line with a price target of $550, up from $375, calling the optical networking space a critical bottleneck in the AI buildout. Rothschild & Co Redburn downgraded Flutter Entertainment to Neutral from Buy with a price target of $119, down from $169, citing four consecutive guidance cuts. BNP Paribas upgraded AT&T to Outperform from Neutral with a price target of $30, up from $26, while HSBC double downgraded CCU to Reduce from Buy with a price target of $10, down from $15. In initiations, Rothschild & Co Redburn started CoreWeave at Sell with a $54 price target and Equinix at Buy with a $1,261 price target, and Needham initiated Nano Nuclear Energy at Buy with a $33 price target.

Lumentum expects first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenues of $1.225-$1.275 billion and non-GAAP earnings of $4.05-$4.35 per share, following a fiscal fourth-quarter performance in which revenues surged 109.3% year over year to $1.01 billion. Non-GAAP gross margin expanded to 50.4% from 37.8% and operating margin jumped to 36.6% from 15%. The company said Optical Circuit Switch shipments doubled sequentially in the fiscal fourth quarter and it expects its first quarter to generate more than $100 million in OCS revenues, while orders from its largest customer have increased significantly since the earnings call, giving it enough visibility to introduce a fiscal 2028 earnings target of $40 per share. Lumentum began shipping 1.6T transceivers in the fiscal fourth quarter and expects adoption to accelerate through calendar 2027, and it said 200G EMLs already account for more than 25% of EML revenues. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2027 earnings stands at $21.30 per share, up 17.3% over the past 60 days, while the consensus mark for first-quarter fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $4.22 per share, up 18.5% over the past 60 days.

ALT Telecom Public Company Limited, or ALT, disclosed that its business outlook for the second half of 2026 will continue to grow on rising demand for fiber networks and submarine cables driven by the expansion of data centers, cloud and AI. The company targets double-digit revenue growth in the second half, supported by recurring revenue recognition. ALT recently signed additional network leasing contracts with global hyperscaler customers, lifting its backlog to approximately 6.9 billion baht, up from 5.115 billion baht in the second quarter of 2026. It expects to gradually recognize revenue from the backlog and new work at an average of 300 to 350 million baht per quarter, with an average gross margin of about 18% to 23%. The business is split roughly 50% network infrastructure and services and 50% system integration, EPC, smart energy and smart grid. The company plans to expand cable landing station connection points to accommodate international submarine cables and link its network into the Eastern Economic Corridor, one of the region's target areas for data center investment. Meanwhile, businesses in its group and joint ventures have a project pipeline under negotiation or awaiting bidding worth about 500 million to 1 billion baht, with profit sharing expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027. In its solar private PPA business, about 17 megawatts of projects have already reached commercial operation. As for opportunities from the Smart Grid Master Plan of the Provincial Electricity Authority and the Metropolitan Electricity Authority, which will gradually replace meters with smart meters across millions of households, ALT is ready to join bids for network and communications system installation for smart meters and advanced metering infrastructure worth several billion baht in total. The company has set capital expenditure of about 500 million to 1 billion baht per year, focused on fiber and submarine businesses, with an average internal rate of return of no less than 10% to 15%, and aims to keep its debt-to-equity ratio below 1.5 times, from about 1.57 times currently. It is also pressing ahead with a business restructuring under the JUMP+ plan, targeting an increase in the share of recurring income from 47% in the second half of 2026 to 60% of total revenue by 2028, and raising gross margin from 19.6% to 23% by 2028.

Credo Technology shares have fallen roughly 43% from their 52-week high of $308.67 even after the company posted 115% year-over-year revenue growth, leaving the stock at $175.89 against an average Wall Street price target of $282.47, or about 60.6% implied upside. Stifel Nicolaus analyst Tore Svanberg holds the Street-high $350 target, implying roughly 99% upside, citing AEC dominance as hyperscalers move to active cables at 800G and 1.6T speeds, expanding design wins at Microsoft and Amazon, and share gains for PAM4 optical DSPs and Line Card retimers. In its September 1 fiscal 2027 first-quarter report, Credo posted revenue of $479 million and non-GAAP EPS of $1.20, beating the $1.17 estimate, and guided the second quarter to $525 million to $535 million, but investors focused on customer concentration, with the top customer at 33% of revenue and the second at 28%. Management guides to more than $600 million in optical revenue this fiscal year, with ZeroFlap optics, silicon photonics PICs, and optical DSPs each contributing over $100 million, and full-year revenue expected to grow more than 85% with non-GAAP net margin near 50%. Of 19 analysts, 4 rate the stock Strong Buy, 14 Buy, 1 Hold, and none Sell, while the FY2028 EPS consensus has climbed from $8.69 ninety days ago to $9.70. Credo is the outlier among AI-connectivity peers: Astera Labs trades near $303.25, up 82.3% year to date, Marvell Technology sits near $244.25, up 187.4% year to date, and Broadcom trades near $357.61, while Credo carries both the worst recent performance and the largest consensus-implied upside in the group.

CUbIQ Technologies and Coherent Corp. announced a successful proof-of-concept quantum key distribution demonstrator that puts a CV-QKD transceiver in a standard QSFP-28 pluggable form factor running alongside Coherent 200G FR4 OSFP56 optics. The link was tested over an NVIDIA DGX Spark host system via its ConnectX-7 interface with no changes to the existing network, and the companies say the pluggable approach cuts power consumption, cost and footprint by a factor of 100 compared with conventional rack-based QKD systems. CUbIQ said the module derives keys from the quantum properties of the optical signal itself, so an interception attempt leaves a measurable fingerprint and compromised keys are detected and discarded before use. CUbIQ CEO Aaron Albores Mejia said the work with Coherent proves quantum-safe networking can be demonstrated on the AI infrastructure operators are already deploying. The demonstrator is being shown at ECOC 2026 in Málaga, Spain, from 21 to 23 September 2026 at Booth 1051 in the Dutch Pavilion, and the two companies said they are also working toward a next generation of secure, high-capacity optical pluggable transceivers.