AI shovel seller NVIDIA is putting money into other companies again, as its announcement revealed a US$4 billion investment into Lumentum and Coherent, with each getting US$2 billion.
The agreement with Lumentum is structured as a multi-year strategic partnership, including a multi-billion-dollar purchase commitment and future capacity rights for advanced laser components. On the Coherent side, NVIDIA will collaborate on next-generation silicon photonics for AI infrastructure, with a similar multi-billion-dollar purchase commitment and secured access to advanced laser and optical networking products.
Lumentum and Coherent are leading players in optics and photonics technologies that power the foundation of systems that generate and transmit light for high-speed sensing and data transfer. That might sound niche, but in the AI era, moving massive volumes of data quickly and efficiently between GPUs is just as important as the chips themselves.
Specifically, Lumentum specializes more in things that power the backbone of AI networks, cloud computing platforms, and next-generation communications infrastructure, while Coherent develops high-performance photonics components for advanced optical applications.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang calls this an important step in continuing the important scope of scaling compute clusters through the integration of the most sophisticated silicon photonics into gigawatt-scale AI factories.
With this move, Team Green’s approach from pure electrical interconnects to a mix, or perhaps a complete shift to optical-based components, would theoretically offer a path to higher bandwidth, lower latency, and improved energy efficiency in its future offerings.
