Bet on These Photonics ETFs to Exploit the Next Wave of AI Revolution

Photonics is rapidly gaining traction in AI infrastructure. As of May 2026, NvidiaNVDA had committed at least $6.5 billion to photonics companies over the prior three months, including $500 million to CorningGLW for advanced optical connectivity solutions and $2 billion each to LumentumLITE, CoherentCOHR and MarvellMRVL (as cited in CNBC). 

The impact has been significant, with Marvell shares gaining 183.4% year to date, while Lumentum, Corning and Coherent have advanced 142.5%, 68.8% and 60.3%, respectively.

Looking ahead, Goldman Sachs projects the total addressable market for optical networking to grow from roughly $15 billion in 2026 to about $154 billion by 2028 — reflecting a more than ninefold increase. 

This explosive growth projection puts a bright spotlight on photonics stocks, and the exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that hold them, for investors eager to gain exposure to AI's next wave of revolution.

Before identifying these ETFs, however, it is crucial to understand the connection between photonics and the AI boom — and why this may be an opportune time for investors to enter this industry.

The Connection Between Photonics and AI: Why "Light" Is Replacing "Copper"

AI training clusters have expanded from hundreds of GPUs to tens of thousands. Copper interconnects are hitting physical limits on three fronts simultaneously — bandwidth, distance and power. The higher the data rate, the worse copper's signal integrity and the greater its power consumption. When AI clusters span multiple racks, the distance between chips exceeds what copper can efficiently serve.

On the contrary, since photonics uses light instead of electrical signals to transmit data, it offers significantly higher bandwidth and lower power consumption. 

Recognizing the advantages of photonics over copper, other hyperscalers, apart from Nvidia, are also investing in this transition.

Microsoft's Azure became the first major cloud provider to deploy 3M expanded-beam optical technology, which makes connections more tolerant of dust and wear, faster to install, and less maintenance-intensive. 

Amazonhas signed a multi-year multi-billion-dollar fiber-optic supply agreement with Corning to support its expanding U.S. data center infrastructure.

Further, Nvidia has joined AMD, Broadcom, Meta, and OpenAIto establish the OCI (Optical Compute Interconnect) multi-source agreement standard, standardizing the optical physical layer so chips from different vendors can communicate over the same optical layer.