Astera Labs expands Taiwan operations to speed rack-scale AI deployment

Ciena Corp. rebounded as much as 14.3 percent in intraday trading on Tuesday to $445.36 apiece, helped by peer Marvell Technology's growth outlook for the optical interconnects sector. At its recent Investor Day, Marvell said it expects the industry to grow by 60 to 70 percent to about $65 billion through 2030, with switching and storage alone reaching $85 billion, or a compounded annual growth rate of 40 percent. Those figures were markedly higher than Ciena's own 30 percent growth outlook for its business by 2029. Bernstein initiated coverage with an outperform rating and a $440 price target, acknowledging near-term supply constraints but calling the stock undervalued, while Evercore maintained an outperform rating and a $550 price target, citing optimism that Ciena can achieve more than $25 in earnings per share. Hedge fund holders in Ciena rose to 81 in the second quarter from 73 in the first, with combined holdings up 2 percent to $3.997 billion from $3.913 billion quarter-on-quarter.

Astera Labs shares have climbed 117.8% year to date, outpacing the broader Zacks Computer & Technology sector's 24.2% gain and the Zacks Internet - Software industry's 7.1% growth, as well as peers Cisco Systems and Credo Technology, which rose 46.5% and 47.7% respectively. The company guided third-quarter 2026 revenues to between $540 million and $560 million, with the midpoint implying roughly 40% sequential growth, while management projected non-GAAP earnings of $1.16 to $1.21 per share. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter revenues stands at $550.39 million, up 138.71% year over year, and the consensus earnings estimate of $1.19 per share implies a 142.86% year-over-year increase. In the second quarter of 2026, PCIe 6 products including the Scorpio AI Fabric Switches and Aries Retimers accounted for more than 50% of total revenues, and the Leo CXL memory controller line has won new design wins at major U.S. hyperscalers with volume shipments expected in 2027. Astera Labs faces rising competition from Marvell Technology, whose data center revenues represented 79% of total revenues in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, and its shares trade at a forward 12-month Price/Sales of 22.66X versus the Computer & Technology sector's 6.18X, with a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Marvell Technology is expanding its partnership with Nvidia across advanced networking, silicon photonics and optical interconnect technologies, with Nvidia investing $2 billion in Marvell as part of the March 2026 agreement. The collaboration began in 2025 to give hyperscalers more flexibility in building custom AI computing infrastructure, and was expanded in 2026 to connect Marvell to Nvidia's AI factory and AI-RAN ecosystems through NVLink Fusion. Under the expanded arrangement, Marvell will supply custom XPUs and NVLink Fusion-compatible scale-up networking, while Nvidia provides Vera CPUs, ConnectX NICs, BlueField DPUs, NVLink interconnects, Spectrum-X switches and rack-scale AI compute. Marvell also worked with Microsoft and Utimaco to launch Azure Payment HSM v2, a cloud-native payment security platform built on Marvell's LiquidSecurity hardware security modules, with Utimaco contributing Atalla Payments Module software and Microsoft providing Azure. Marvell competes with Astera Labs and Broadcom in networking, and its shares have gained 239.5% year to date, trading at a price-to-sales multiple of 14.78X versus the Zacks Electronics - Semiconductors industry's 5.15X, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2027 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 48.2%.

Fabric.AI has engaged global management consulting firm Kearney to lead and accelerate the commercialization strategy for its Neural I/o MicroLED-based optical interconnect platform. The company, together with its development partner Kopin Corporation, has executed non-disclosure agreements with several leading semiconductor and data center technology companies, with technical discussions already underway. Kearney's mandate is to convert that early engagement into a structured commercial pipeline by sharpening product positioning, identifying and prioritizing target customers and channel partners, and preparing Fabric.AI for active sales discussions expected to begin after planned hardware demonstrations in early 2027. James Altucher, an independent strategic advisor to Fabric.AI, said Neural I/o addresses the two constraints defining the next generation of AI data centers, how much data can be moved and what it costs in power to move it, and that Kearney's role is to help turn confidential discussions into commercial relationships. Fabric.AI trades on Nasdaq under the ticker FABC, while Kopin Corporation trades under KOPN.

Nokia CEO Justin Hotard said the tech industry could build data centers twice as fast if not for supply constraints, telling CNBC that continued demand signals the AI buildout is still in its early days. "If we could build 2x faster, our customers could build 2x faster, they probably would," Hotard said, adding that he does not believe the industry is overbuilding. Nokia, one of the world's biggest telecommunications equipment makers, has pivoted into the AI infrastructure space, and its stock is up around 130% over the past year. Investments in the AI buildout, from data centers to chips and related infrastructure, will total $10.3 trillion from 2025 to 2032, an average of 3.63% of U.S. gross domestic product per year, according to research presented at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity. Hotard said demand is not solely dependent on frontier labs like Anthropic and OpenAI releasing new models, arguing that even without another frontier model in the next three years, deploying existing technology could yield tremendous progress.