DigiTimes汇编Lumentum CEO访谈：AI数据中心InP激光器缺货延长至2029年初，产能被订购一空

The shortage of indium phosphide (InP) lasers that feed AI data center optics is lengthening, not easing. Lumentum now says its capacity is spoken for into early 2029, and its largest customers are starting to share the financial risk of building more. The shift points to a bottleneck in AI networking at a handful of laser chipmakers, whose new capacity takes years to bring online.

Chief executive Michael Hurlston told Bloomberg in Tokyo on October 9 that Lumentum's optical components were "completely sold out" through early 2029. The company cannot meet about 70% of demand for some products through next year and about 30% of demand for others through 2028, he said, adding that customers have begun locking in orders for 2030. Six months earlier, Hurlston had said Lumentum was on track to sell out its capacity by 2028, according to Bloomberg.
"We are really trying to catch up, add capacity as fast as we can, but we are very, very far behind what customers want," Hurlston said.
Hyperscalers take on part of the risk
Hurlston said it takes three to five years to build new production capacity. That lag makes one factor central to Lumentum's plans: hyperscalers' willingness to absorb some of the risk suppliers take on when they build new facilities. "These hyperscalers are willing to put money behind it," he said. He added that Lumentum will need to consider an acquisition over the next year to broaden its product lineup.
Nvidia has already put capital in. In March, it agreed to invest US$2 billion each in Lumentum and rival Coherent under nonexclusive deals that include multibillion-dollar purchase commitments, according to optics.org . Weeks later, Lumentum bought a 240,000-square-foot site in Greensboro, North Carolina, from Qorvo for a reported US$18 million. The site will make continuous-wave and ultra-high-power lasers on 6-inch InP wafers and ramp to volume in 2028, optics.org reported.
Japan carries the near-term ramp
Hurlston said Lumentum has raised capacity 12-fold over the past two years at its Sagamihara facility in the Tokyo area and plans to invest at least US$350 million there and at a neighboring site, of which US$75 million has been deployed. The company has also expanded its plant in Caswell, England, is seeking to buy a facility in Japan, and may seek subsidies, he said.
The shortage is already showing up in results. Fiscal fourth-quarter revenue rose 109% from a year earlier to US$1.01 billion, and Lumentum guided fiscal first-quarter 2027 revenue of US$1.225 billion to US$1.275 billion, implying more than 130% year-over-year growth at the midpoint, according to a MarketBeat summary of the August earnings call. Chief financial officer Wajid Ali attributed the gross-margin gain partly to increased pricing for certain products, and management said the pump laser business remained effectively sold out despite capacity expansion.
The next market moves optics to the chip
Hurlston said a larger opportunity lies in lasers that supply light for data encoding near AI accelerators, so high-speed electrical signals travel only a few millimeters. "This market can be our biggest by far," he said, adding that demand should gain traction around 2029. "It's another order of magnitude in terms of size." On the August call, Lumentum said it expected high-volume shipments of ultra-high-power laser chips for scale-up applications to begin in the second half of calendar 2027, ahead of customer deployments in 2028, and that it had received its first purchase order for an external light source module, MarketBeat reported.
A China ban could tighten supply further
Reuters reported in August that the Trump administration was drafting a ban on new models of Chinese data center devices, which would likely hit Zhongji Innolight, holder of a 27% share of the global data center transceiver market, according to Counterpoint Research. Chinese makers supply roughly two-thirds of the world's high-speed AI optical transceivers, and Counterpoint has said Lumentum and Coherent could not fill the vacuum, Bloomberg reported. In September, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation that would keep transceivers from Innolight and Eoptolink out of sensitive government systems.
A Morgan Stanley research note dated October 1 said any Federal Communications Commission (FCC) restrictions would most likely be phased in starting with the 3.2T generation, with a possible exemption based on 65% of a module's bill-of-materials value coming from US-based companies. China is also a major source of the InP substrates used to make lasers, and Hurlston said the US needs to balance national security concerns against the risk of disrupting the supply chain.

Credit: Lumentum announcement and August 2026 earnings call; Bloomberg interview, October 9, 2026; compiled by DIGITIMES