As of March 9, 2026

The Silicon Photonics and Optical Networking sector is showing strong bullish momentum, led by a massive surge in $AXTI. This follows renewed investor confidence regarding the company's progress on export permits and surging demand for its indium phosphide substrates used in AI optical infrastructure (simplywall.st/stocks/us…).

The explosive growth of AI data centers has created a massive bottleneck in data transfer speeds, shifting the industry focus from compute power to optical interconnects. This is driving a structural re-rating across the entire optical supply chain, from foundational materials to advanced packaging and testing, as hyper-scalers aggressively upgrade to 800G and 1.6T networking to support next-generation GPU clusters.

$AXTI: 19.12%

$AAOI: 15.74%

$AEHR: 14.80%

$LITE: 14.73%

$BESIY: 10.05%

$CIEN: 8.28%

$COHR: 7.04%

$POET: 6.53%

$FORM: 4.74%

$GLW: 4.67%

$TSEM: 4.40%

$KEYS: 3.52%

$LWLG: 2.62%

$ALMU: 2.53%

$NDX: 1.32%

$GFS: 1.07%

$SPX: 0.83%

1. Optical Components and Foundational Materials

$AXTI, $COHR, $GLW: These companies provide the essential raw materials, advanced lasers, and physical fiber-optic glass required for high-speed light transmission.

$POET, $LWLG, $ALMU: Represents specialized, emerging bets on next-generation photonic integrated circuits and electro-optic polymers designed to lower power consumption.

2. AI Networking and Transceivers

$AAOI, $LITE, $CIEN: These players are directly capitalizing on the data center upgrade cycle, supplying the critical optical transceivers and high-capacity routing equipment that link AI servers.

3. Advanced Packaging and Semiconductor Manufacturing

$BESIY, $TSEM, $GFS: Foundries and equipment makers enabling the physical integration of optical and electrical components through hybrid bonding and specialized silicon photonics manufacturing.

4. Testing and Validation Equipment

$AEHR, $FORM, $KEYS: The surge in complex silicon photonics demands rigorous wafer-level testing and signal measurement to ensure component reliability before deployment in mission-critical AI data centers.