What Does Coherent Corp Make? The Photonics Wiring the AI Boom
Coherent makes the lasers and optical transceivers connecting AI data centers, plus the sensing components inside iPhone Face ID. Here's who buys its photonics and what raw materials it depends on.
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Coherent, formerly known as II-VI, makes industrial lasers, precision optics, and silicon carbide, but its fastest-growing business right now is the optical transceivers wiring together AI data centers. Every large AI cluster needs to move enormous amounts of data between servers, and optical connections are how that happens at scale.
The short answer
Coherent's photonics business spans data centers and consumer devices:
- Who buys it: NVIDIA buys optical transceivers for AI data-center networking; Apple uses Coherent VCSELs in Face ID sensing; Meta Platforms and Amazon buy datacom optics for their own AI infrastructure.
- What it's made from: Sumitomo Electric supplies the compound-semiconductor substrates used in Coherent's photonic devices.
- How it's manufactured: AIXTRON supplies the MOCVD epitaxy systems Coherent uses to grow those compound-semiconductor materials.
The full interactive map is on Coherent's supply chain page.
Who buys Coherent's photonics
NVIDIA, the company at the center of the AI buildout, buys Coherent's optical transceivers and interconnects to network its data centers. Meta Platforms and are both buying the same category of datacom optics for their own AI infrastructure, meaning Coherent's components sit inside the networking layer of several of the largest AI buildouts happening right now, largely invisible to anyone outside the industry.
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