Optical interconnect stocks are surging Tuesday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a surprise appearance at Marvell's Computex 2026 keynote in Taipei and delivered a clear verdict on the future of AI data center connectivity, driving Coherent Inc (NYSE:COHR) up 17.3% to $425.59, Lumentum Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:LITE) up 13.3% to $1,025, Corning (NYSE:GLW) up nearly 12% to $197.88, and Ciena Corp (NYSE:CIEN)up over 8% to $616.46.
Huang's remarks crystallized a hierarchy that Wall Street is now pricing in aggressively. "We should use copper as much as we can, for as long as we can, but copper has its limits," he said. "The right strategy is to scale up with copper as long as you can — after that you scale up further with optics, you scale out with optics and you scale across with optics. So you use optics wherever you must, you use copper wherever you can."
Marvell CEO Matt Murphy reinforced the structural shift, noting that the "copper boundary" is physically receding toward the rack interior, creating an imminent demand surge for optical interconnects and co-packaged optics (CPO) technologies as AI workloads scale. Huang also called Marvell "the next trillion-dollar company" at the event, sending Marvell shares up approximately 23%.
The Computex comments did not arrive in isolation. Over the past three months, Nvidia has committed at least $6.5 billion to photonics companies. That includes $2 billion investments each in Lumentum and Coherent, a $500 million stake in Corning for advanced optical connectivity, and participation in Ayar Labs' $500 million funding round.
The capital deployment underscores the strategic logic Huang outlined Tuesday: photonics moves data using light rather than electricity, offering the speed and energy-efficiency advantages that become critical as GPU-to-GPU traffic intensifies across hyperscale AI clusters. Optical interconnect names have already been among 2026's strongest performers, with Lumentum, Corning, and Ciena more than doubling year-to-date heading into Tuesday's session, according to Moomoo.
The bullish backdrop was already forming before Computex. Bank of America recently raised price targets on both Cisco and Ciena, citing an accelerating AI optics boom — a tailwind that Huang's remarks have now amplified significantly.
source https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/huangs-coppervsoptics-call-sends-optical-stocks-surging-4722633
