AI Infrastructure Analysis · Feb 2026
Total Addressable Market
$83.2B
↑ 22% CAGR to 2030
Critical Gaps Identified
7
3 blocking scale-up
Investment Gap
$2.1B
Manufacturing + R&D
Efficiency Target
15x
Required by 2028
Market Size by Segment
Optical Interconnect
Co-Packaged Optics
Silicon Photonics
Data Center Power Demand
Power Efficiency Roadmap
Q1
2025
CPO evaluations begin at hyperscalers
Q3
2026
NVIDIA CPO switches ship; Yield critical
!
2027
1.6T ports mainstream; Grid constraints
!
2028
Power must reach <3 pJ/bit
2029
CPO 50%+ adoption target
!
2030
78 GW AI capacity required
Gap Severity Matrix
Critical
High
Medium
Low
Dependency Graph
Core
Category
Company
Technology
Gap
Private Funding
$2.5B+
Venture-backed
Top Valuation
$4.4B
Lightmatter Series D
Funding Gap
$500M
Manufacturing scale
Avg TRL
7.2
Near production
Company Comparison
Investment Thesis

Manufacturing Scale-Up

CPO yield improvement from 50-60% to 80%+ is the primary blocker. Foundry partnerships with TSMC and Intel provide strategic advantage.

TAM $4B+ · 2026-2028

Thermal Management

Liquid cooling growing at 30% CAGR. Direct-to-chip solutions critical for 120 kW/rack AI clusters emerging with GB200.

TAM $21B · Active Now

Comb Laser Technology

Multi-wavelength sources scaling from 4 to 128 channels enable DWDM density required for next-gen AI node interconnects.

TAM $1B+ · 2026-2027

Test Infrastructure

Testing represents 29% of manufacturing cost. Automated photonic ASIC testing is prerequisite for volume production.

TAM $200M+ · 2025-2027
Risk Factors
Yield Plateau
Manufacturing yield stalls below 80%
P: High I: High
Thermal Limits
50k+ element density unsolvable
P: Med I: High
Standards Split
UCIe vs proprietary delays adoption
P: Med I: Med
TSMC Dominance
Single-source dependency in CPO
P: High I: Med