Networking and cables
The switches, lasers and cables that link thousands of chips so they behave as one computer.
Who is making money
The companies earning or raising real money in this part of AI. Suppliers are marked: they sell to the builders rather than to end users.
networking chips and switches
AI chip revenue $16.7B in a quarter, up 221%
Open profileMakes optical fibre, cable and connectivity products for data centres and telecoms.
Optical Communications sales of $2.07B in Q2 2026 (quarter to 30 June 2026)
Open profileMakes switches, routers and AI networking systems sold to cloud providers and enterprises.
About $4B of AI infrastructure revenue in fiscal 2026 (year to July 2026)
Open profilelasers and optical parts
Revenue up 90%. Nvidia invested $2B (Mar 2026)
Open profileMakes custom AI chips for large clouds, plus data centre connectivity chips.
$2.006B in the quarter to July 2026 (fiscal Q2 2026), up 58%
Open profileMakes copper and optical connectors that link servers, switches and racks in data centres.
Sales of $8.76B in Q2 2026 (quarter to 30 June 2026)
Open profileswitches for AI clusters
Revenue of $3.04B in Q2 2026 (quarter to 30 June 2026)
Open profileMakes chips and switches that connect AI accelerators inside a server rack.
Revenue of $392.4M in Q2 2026 (quarter to 30 June 2026)
Open profileMakes optical networking gear that links data centres and carries traffic between them.
Revenue of $1.67B in fiscal Q3 2026 (quarter to 1 August 2026)
Open profileMakes optical transceivers and lasers that connect AI data centres, plus industrial lasers.
Datacenter and Communications revenue of $1.62B in fiscal Q4 2026 (quarter to 30 June 2026)
Open profilehigh-speed cables and connection chips
$1.3B annual revenue
Open profileWhere the money flows
Clouds buy switches and optics alongside every GPU cluster, often through system builders.
The openings
Gaps still open in this area, from ones a small business could take to ones only giants can play.
- Small business Monitoring and fault-finding software for AI cluster networks
- Startup money Light-based (photonic) chip connections
- Giants only Laser and transceiver factories
Optical stocks have run hard on bullish analyst notes, and Nvidia taking stakes in suppliers blurs how much demand is organic.
The map updates three times a week.
241 companies across 25 areas, 62 money flows and 89 openings so far. New research lands every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
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