At the GTC 2026 conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explicitly corrected the market misconception of "optics replacing copper," stating that copper cables remain indispensable inside AI server racks due to their physical advantages like zero power consumption and low latency, while. At the GTC 2026 conference, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explicitly corrected the market misconception of "optics replacing copper," stating that copper cables remain indispensable inside AI server racks due to their physical advantages like zero power consumption and low latency, while. POET Technologies (NASDAQ: POET) and optical interconnect startup Lumilens announced a $50 million supply and joint development agreement on May 14 in San Jose, California, targeting the copper-wire bottleneck that is now slowing AI infrastructure globally — a constraint that affects every. Copper is the interconnect of choice for short reach applications due to its low cost, simplicity, and high reliability. The limitation with copper is that, due to skin effects, the channel loss severely limits the cable reach while increasing thickness as transmission speeds increase as shown in. With the advent of optical interconnects, there is a promising alternative that could reshape the landscape of electronic design. By using light to transmit data, optical interconnects offer significant advantages over copper, including higher bandwidth, lower latency, and reduced power. The advent of AI has driven an increase in the number of graphical processing units (GPUs) in data center server racks, which in turns means more fiber is required to connect these GPUs to one another, Mike O'Day, SVP and General Manager of Corning's Optical Communications unit, said at the. Nvidia, Corning, Molex, and Credo are pushing optical interconnects as AI data centers strain copper cabling limits. Nvidia's optical interconnect push has become a clear signal that AI data centers are moving beyond the limits of copper cabling.
