Investments of at least USD 6.5 billion in companies developing photonic technology have announced in the last quarter Nvidia, in an effort to address one of the biggest obstacles to its development Artificial Intelligence.
Photonic, the use of light for data transfer, is considered a more efficient alternative to the current method of data transfer through electricity, which consumes significantly more energy, which is identified as a critical obstacle to the wider development of Artificial Intelligence.
Since early March, Nvidia has announced US$2 billion investments in Lumentum, Coherent and Marvell, which develop photonic technologies. At the same time, he pledged to invest $500 million in Corning for the development of previous optical interconnection solutions, and also participated in the Series funding round ECU 500 million for startup Ayer Labs.
As Alvin Nguyen, Forrester's senior analysis notes, photonic enables Nvidia to strengthen the AI infrastructure without the energy cost of dependence on copper and electrical data transmission systems. According to him, Nvidia through these investments ensures that the evolution of photonic will continue, preventing a possible «ceiling» the efficiency and expansion of the AI systems, which it considers likely to occur otherwise.
Photonic can be used in the AI infrastructure to transfer data between GPUs, memory, networks, servers and data centers, instead of electrical signals traded through copper cables. Although copper remains today the main mode of transport, due to lower costs and high reliability, analysts estimate that photonic will have an increasing role in AI systems. As Morningstar's Brian Colello points out, Nvidia's next generation AI systems will require significantly increased visual connectivity, due to the explosive increase in bandwidth from new models and increased use.
Already Nvidia has integrated photonic solutions into the interface product portfolio, presenting tools that allow the connection of millions of GPUs between data centers, significantly reducing energy consumption and operating costs.
The market already seems to respond positively to photonic, with the company shares in the industry recording an explosive rise. In particular Lumentum's share has been strengthened since the beginning of the year by 134%, Coherent 96%, Marvell 122% and Corning 111%.
Nvidia is not alone in this bet. Other great players of artificial intelligence invest in the site. Like AMD who participated in the Ayer Labs funding round and bought startup Enosemi in 2025, while having invested in Teramount and Celestial AI. Alphabet and Microsoft's venture arms also supported nEye in a $80 million funding round.
Despite the dynamics of photonic, there are significant technical challenges on the horizon. As Futurum Group's Nick Patience told CNBC, the key issue is not technology itself but its massive implementation. According to him, the transition to the new era has begun, but is still at an early stage. «I expect its broad adoption from 2028 onwards.»
Source: skai.gr
Read them News today and be informed of recent news.
Follow it. Skai.gr on Google News and get all the news first.
