Lumentum says AI optical part capacity is sold out into early 2029
Lumentum CEO Michael Hurlston said in a Tokyo interview that demand for the company's optical components continues to outstrip supply as tech firms race to build faster AI data centers, with capacity fully sold out and shortages expected to persist into early 2029. Bloomberg reported that about 70% of demand for some products will remain unmet into 2027, while other products face roughly a 30% supply gap that will be hard to close through 2028; constraints have worsened versus six months ago. Counterpoint Research said Lumentum and Coherent, Nvidia's silicon-photonics co-packaged-optics partner, may be unable to fill the gap left by Chinese suppliers such as Innolight even if Washington moves to restrict new Chinese optical transceiver modules.
Optical modules and silicon-photonics parts are a key bottleneck for AI data center buildouts, so capacity locked up through 2029 could constrain how fast compute can scale.