According to a research report, attendance at the OFC 2026 conference held in Los Angeles from March 17–19 highlighted strong confidence among incumbent manufacturers in the AI supercycle. The sustainability of AI demand is viewed positively, with expectations that scale-up and scale-across scenarios will drive a continuous increase in the proportion of network construction costs. This trend is anticipated to create incremental opportunities for leading players across various segments of the optical communication industry. Key areas to watch include developments in Scale-up CPO/NPO, Scale-across, and OCS technologies.

CPO emerged as a major focus at OFC. Chinese companies demonstrated leadership in areas such as FAU, ELS modules, and OE optical engine packaging, while Japanese and American firms showcased more innovative solutions in optical chips and connector ferrules. Although challenges remain for CPO to achieve large-scale commercial deployment, its significance is particularly pronounced in scale-up scenarios due to significantly higher requirements for beachfront density and power efficiency per bandwidth compared to scale-out. Industry consensus supports the view that CPO will see clear volume growth in incremental scale-up applications, with acceleration expected in the second half of 2027 through 2028.

Thanks to advantages in maintenance cost, reliability, and supply chain replication, NPO solutions are projected to achieve early volume orders among certain CSP customers by 2027. XPO also emerged as an important new topic at OFC, representing a high-density liquid-cooled pluggable optical form factor for next-generation AI data centers. The development of XPO indicates that pluggable modules will have a long lifecycle in scale-out scenarios and will coexist with NPO/CPO over the long term.

The expansion of AI clusters is expected to drive accelerated growth in scale-across connectivity demand. According to Cisco, bandwidth required for connecting one million xPUs in a scale-across architecture is approximately 14 times that of WAN/DCI networks. To achieve high-capacity, high-reliability, and low-latency transmission in such scenarios, system architectures will demand more from underlying optical components, fibers, and optical modules. Technologies such as Multi-rail and Coherent-Lite are likely to see accelerated adoption.

The report maintains existing ratings, target prices, and earnings forecasts for covered companies. Firms such as Accelink, Cisco, Arista, Marvell, and TKH Group are highlighted for attention. Risks include potential slower-than-expected development in the AI industry and delays in breakthroughs for new technologies such as CPO.