CPO & Photonics Thesis (I) – 5 Stocks with Realistic Mid-term 10x Potential

Outlier Capital · Outlier Capital · 28 июля 2026, 12:46 · ⏱ 6 мин чтения  | Читать в Substack ↗
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Co-packaged optics (CPO) and silicon photonics are becoming essential to overcome bandwidth and power bottlenecks in AI data centers, with NVIDIA and AMD already ramping CPO production. This creates a multi-year structural boom for photonics supply-chain companies, and the article identifies POET as a high-upside pure-play capable of 10x+ over 5–7 years.
  • NVIDIA's Spectrum-X CPO switches are in full production with 5x better power efficiency and 5x longer AI uptime, targeting million-GPU clusters.
  • AMD's Helios rack-scale systems (72× MI455X GPUs) are in full production with shipments starting late Q3 2026.
  • The CPO market is projected to grow from ~$90-120M in 2025 to multi-billion scale by early 2030s at 35%+ CAGR.
  • NVIDIA has made $2B investments each into Lumentum and Coherent, plus multi-billion purchase commitments, and partnered with Corning for optical connectivity.
  • POET's Infinity optical engines are moving from development to commercial execution with production orders, targeting CPO switches and high-density AI links.
  • The broader OCI MSA (AMD, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI) is driving open optical standards, making CPO adoption inevitable for both scale-up and scale-out.
Время чтения 6 мин
Объём 6,000 симв.
Категория finance
Идеи
Outlier Capital Автор Substack, Outlier Capital
Article states NVIDIA made a $2B investment in Coherent plus multi-billion purchase commitments, validating Coherent's role in optical engines and photonics components for CPO.
Article states NVIDIA made a $2B investment in Coherent plus multi-billion purchase commitments, validating Coherent's role in optical engines and photonics components for CPO. Risk: Integration challenges and competition from other optical component makers.
Outlier Capital Автор Substack, Outlier Capital
Article details NVIDIA's CPO production ramp, power efficiency gains, and supply chain investments, confirming its leadership in the CPO transition which should drive higher optical content per rack.
Article details NVIDIA's CPO production ramp, power efficiency gains, and supply chain investments, confirming its leadership in the CPO transition which should drive higher optical content per rack. Risk: Execution risks in Vera Rubin ramp and potential competition from AMD/Intel in optical interconnects.
Outlier Capital Автор Substack, Outlier Capital
Article states NVIDIA made a $2B investment in Lumentum plus multi-billion purchase commitments, directly validating Lumentum as a critical supplier of lasers and photonics for NVIDIA's CPO switches.
Article states NVIDIA made a $2B investment in Lumentum plus multi-billion purchase commitments, directly validating Lumentum as a critical supplier of lasers and photonics for NVIDIA's CPO switches. Risk: Customer concentration on NVIDIA; need to scale manufacturing to meet demand.
Outlier Capital Автор Substack, Outlier Capital
Article mentions NVIDIA's partnership with Corning for optical connectivity manufacturing, positioning Corning as a key supplier of fiber and connectivity solutions for CPO-based data centers.
Article mentions NVIDIA's partnership with Corning for optical connectivity manufacturing, positioning Corning as a key supplier of fiber and connectivity solutions for CPO-based data centers. Risk: Commoditization of fiber products and slower-than-expected CPO adoption.
Outlier Capital Автор Substack, Outlier Capital
POET is a pure-play on optical engines for CPO and AI data centers, with production orders and partnerships positioning it for volume ramp as CPO moves into production with NVIDIA Spectrum-X and futur
POET is a pure-play on optical engines for CPO and AI data centers, with production orders and partnerships positioning it for volume ramp as CPO moves into production with NVIDIA Spectrum-X and future platforms. The small market cap (~$1.1B) and massive TAM create asymmetric upside potential.
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This newsletter, published July 28, 2026, features Outlier Capital discussing COHR, NVDA, LITE, GLW, POET. 5 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.

Speakers: Outlier Capital  · Tickers: COHR, NVDA, LITE, GLW, POET