SAN JOSE, Calif., April 6, 2026, 08:16 PDT
Lumentum Holdings said Monday it will report fiscal third-quarter results on May 5, giving investors a fresh checkpoint on a company that has become central to the AI data-center optics trade. Shares were down about 1.3% in early U.S. trading.
The timing matters because the next constraint in giant AI clusters is no longer only chips. It is also the links between them. Nvidia has said optical interconnect technology is critical to scaling AI factories, and Reuters reported in March that lasers used in co-packaged optics can help speed connections among chips inside huge data centers.
Nvidia sharpened that focus in March when it agreed to invest $2 billion in Lumentum and made a multibillion-dollar purchase commitment for advanced laser components. Jensen Huang said the tie-up was aimed at building “gigawatt-scale AI factories,” while Lumentum chief executive Michael Hurlston said the agreement would help the company add capacity and deepen optics development. NVIDIA Investor Relations
The recent numbers explain the attention. Lumentum said fiscal second-quarter revenue rose to $665.5 million from $402.2 million a year earlier, and Hurlston said demand for optical circuit switches, or OCS — equipment that reroutes data traffic with light — had pushed backlog well beyond $400 million. He also described the company’s roadmap as “mission-critical to the world’s AI leaders.” Lumentum Investor Relations
A March investor briefing laid out a wider runway. Lumentum said OCS was ramping toward a run rate of more than $1 billion in 2027, that more than $400 million of backlog would be filled in the second half of calendar 2026, and that 1.6-terabit transceiver shipments would start this summer. It also said EML laser capacity could rise by more than 50% by the end of 2026.
That growth story now depends on manufacturing as much as design. Lumentum said last month it had bought a 240,000-square-foot Qorvo facility in Greensboro, North Carolina, to make indium phosphide, or InP, optical devices, with production expected to ramp in mid-2028. Nvidia will be a customer of the site, and Nvidia operations chief Debora Shoquist said dependable access to high-performance optical components was “critical” as AI workloads scale. Lumentum Investor Relations
On the product side, Lumentum used OFC in March to show 1.6T transceiver prototypes and a 1060-nanometer VCSEL platform for rack-level AI systems. VCSELs are tiny lasers used to send data over short distances. Chief Technology Officer Matt Sysak said AI infrastructure was “pushing the limits” of conventional electrical interconnects, and Lumentum said its 3D-sensing lines have already shipped more than 10 billion emitters. Lumentum Investor Relations
Lumentum is not the only beneficiary. Coherent joined the S&P 500 with Lumentum last month and received its own $2 billion Nvidia investment, while Barron’s said Applied Optoelectronics has also surged on rising demand for optical networking gear tied to AI data centers.
But the trade is carrying heavier expectations now. Bloomberg said last week Lumentum was trading at almost 57 times estimated earnings, near its record high and more than three times its 10-year average. Analysts told Reuters in March that co-packaged optics could help connect massive AI clusters more efficiently, but the parts still are not being made in volumes large enough to match chip demand and remain expensive to deploy at scale.
That leaves May 5 as more than a routine earnings date. Investors will be looking for proof that backlog, new fabs and prototype systems are turning into repeat shipments fast enough to support a market that has moved quickly from noticing optical bottlenecks to pricing them in.
