What am I missing about photonics as the “next bottleneck” trade?

Been going down a rabbit hole on AI infrastructure and came across this: https://pratimanagement.substack.com/p/why-photonics-scaling-is-an-orchestration Trying to sanity check my takeaway because it kind of breaks the usual “pick the winning chip” mindset. Everyone talks about compute scaling, GPUs, etc. But it seems like the real constraint is starting to shift to moving data, not processing it. Copper interconnects are hitting limits on bandwidth and power, so photonics starts showing up as the solution. But the article’s core point is what I’m stuck on: It’s not a “one breakthrough wins” situation. It’s an integration problem. Like even if one company has the best optical tech, it doesn’t matter unless everything else lines up at the same time: • packaging actually works at scale • thermals don’t kill it • it integrates cleanly with existing silicon • yields don’t collapse in manufacturing So instead of “who has the best photonics,” it becomes “who can actually get a full system into production.” That feels like a completely different type of bet. Am I overthinking this or is this basically where the edge is? Because if that framing is right, most of the obvious “photonics plays” might not be where the value accrues at all.