Top 10 photonics plays across the light-speed stack. AI's next bottleneck isn't compute, it's interconnect. As speeds push past 1.6T, the trade shifts from silicon to photonics. Five layers, wafer to test. Anchors, inflecting names, and speculative bets.
The anchors: still running, but still in the trend.
$Coherent(COHR)$ - Layer 3, Optics. 25% market share in transceivers. $5.81B FY25 revenue, +23% YoY. Named as an NVIDIA partner on Spectrum-X. Book-to-bill over 4x. Druckenmiller's pick.
$Lumentum(LITE)$ - Layer 2, Lasers. The 200G EML monopoly. Only volume supplier of the lasers that make 1.6T transceivers possible. NVIDIA $2B exclusive supply agreement through end of decade. No second source.
$AXT Inc(AXTI)$ - Layer 1, Wafer. Every InP laser in every transceiver starts on an AXT wafer. Doubling InP capacity H2 2026 ahead of the 800G+ ramp. Has run +5,400%, but structurally positioned for the cycle.
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