LightCounting发布2026年5月光模块供应商格局报告，确认中际旭创和新易盛在AI光模块市场领先

LightCounting releases May 2026 Optical Vendor Landscape Report and TOP10 list of optical transceiver suppliers
AI-driven spending of the leading cloud companies exceeded all expectations in 2025 and it will set up new records in 2026. Apart from flooding the industry with money, the AI boom accelerated transitions across the industry supply chain that were brewing for decades. Most transitions take longer than expected. Nothing seems to happen for years, until suddenly the industry looks different. We are at this moment now.
Adoption of silicon photonics is one example. Intel started developing it at the end of last century. Some silicon photonics pioneers were ridiculed for being the oldest start-ups in the industry. Yet, look at where we are today.
NPO/CPO was first deployed by IBM in 2010, followed by a few smaller projects. Some of the projects failed, others were canceled to the great disappointment of companies and engineers supporting them. Leading industry experts were declaring CPO as being dead or being eternally “two years away.” They may still question CPO’s prospects now in favor of NPO. We will take it.
Optical networks became key elements of data centers and AI clusters, evolving from compute nodes or front-end networks to scale-out, scale-up and probably beyond. Optical circuit switches are gaining adoption beyond Google. Will rotor or packet optical switches come next? Is there something else that optics can be used for?
Pluggable DWDM transceivers for switches and routers have been looked down at by all the leading telecom service providers for more than a decade. All of them are deploying these now, partly because of many joint projects with the leading cloud companies that embraced 400ZR/ZR+ and cannot get enough 800ZR/ZR+ coherent DWDM transceivers now. Deployments of scale-across networks will complete this transition.
All these changes are transforming the industry supply chain and there is more to come. Every company is re-evaluating its strategy. If you are not doing it yet, this is the right time to start.
Figure below illustrates changes in the TOP10 list of optical transceiver suppliers over the last 15 years. The ranking accounts for shipments of Ethernet, DWDM, FTTx and wireless fronthaul transceivers, but the Ethernet market accounted for 75% of the total market in 2025.
A majority of the Japanese and US-based suppliers exited this market by 2020, while Chinese vendors improved their rankings. Innolight and Eoptolink focused their businesses on service to the largest cloud companies in the U.S. and this strategy paid off handsomely in 2024-2025.
Innolight’s revenue in 2024 reached $3.3 billion, a 114% increase year-on-year. The company reported $5.3 billion in revenue for 2025 – up 61% and just above of our estimates of 58% growth in the total transceiver market last year. The company is the leading supplier to all the major cloud companies—the hottest segment of the optical transceiver market. It reported 207% growth in revenues for Q1 2026, compared to Q1 2025, benefiting from a sharp ramp in shipments of 1.6T transceivers.
Eoptolink reached record revenues in 2024 at $1.2 billion and again in 2025 at $3.5 billion – up 175% and 189%, respectively. The company is a key supplier of 400G and 800G optics to Amazon, and it has qualified with other large companies in the U.S., including Nvidia. The company reached the #2 rank for the first time in 2025, surpassing Coherent.
Molex moved up the ranking also benefiting from supplying Amazon with 400G and 800G optical transceivers. The middle of our TOP10 list, rankings from #5 to #8, is the most contentious. These vendors have similar market shares and they are competing fiercely for the #5 spot, while Accelink firmly holds onto the #4 position. Expect more changes in 2026. Neither CIG nor Lumentum plan to stay at the bottom of the list for much longer. Please note that the list accounts for sales of optical transceivers only, excluding all other products, which explains lower rankings of Coherent and Lumentum.
Please note that the list accounts for sales of optical transceivers only, excluding all other products, which explains lower rankings of Coherent and Lumentum. We also no longer include the leading suppliers of DWDM modules in this list, such as Cisco, Ciena, Huawei, Marvell and Nokia. The report ranks these suppliers separately based on the number of DWDM ports shipped.
The role of silicon photonics in optical communications continues to grow. As the silicon photonics supply chain matures, we expect to see two types of foundries to emerge: CPO specialists and silicon photonics generalists.
The CPO specialist needs the most advanced processing node to manufacture high-performance ASICs and Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) in house. Intel, Samsung and TSMC fit well here. For these companies, CPO is just another type of advanced packaging technology. As a pioneer of silicon photonics, Intel looks like a generalist now, but we expect it to join the short list of CPO specialists in the future.
All the other foundries will probably become generalists, supporting pluggable transceiver and NPO markets. Some of them may contribute to CPO development as well. Addressing emerging markets outside of optical interconnects will be another function of the generalists.
Another new type of suppliers are companies designing and testing silicon photonic chips. These include several new companies – Sicoya, Silith, and XPhor – first fabless suppliers of PICs. These are fast growing businesses with plans to become publicly traded companies in 2026-2027. Can they replicate the success of numerous fabless IC chip vendors?
The new report is available to subscribers at: https://www.lightcounting.com/login