LightCounting：Scale-up成为光互连新市场

Core Insights - The LightCounting report indicates that investments by cloud companies in data centers and supporting network infrastructure are creating a new and vibrant segment in the optical module market, driven by AI demand from 2023 to 2025, which is expected to continue until 2030 [1] Group 1: Market Growth and Projections - The optical module sales for AI are projected to show strong growth from 2023 to 2025, with a significant increase in demand for optical interconnects due to the AI boom [1] - From 2026 to 2030, the application of optical interconnect technology in AI Scale-up networks is expected to further expand the market, with CPO being the preferred choice due to higher bandwidth density and reliability [3] - LightCounting forecasts an annual market growth rate of 30-35% for 2025 and 2026, followed by 15-20% from 2027 to 2030, as the AI hype begins to stabilize [3] Group 2: Capital Expenditure Insights - Major North American cloud companies are significantly increasing their capital expenditures, with Google raising its 2025 capex to approximately $85 billion, Microsoft exceeding $30 billion in Q1 FY2026, Meta adjusting its 2025 capex range to between $66 billion and $72 billion, and Oracle exceeding $25 billion in FY2026 [3] Group 3: Supply Chain and Market Adjustments - The ongoing trade war has not significantly impacted the supply chain for optical modules sold to U.S. cloud companies, although NVIDIA's GPU sales restrictions to China have temporarily stalled demand from Chinese cloud companies [4] - LightCounting has adjusted its sales forecasts for Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent for 2025 downward but has increased the forecast for 2026 [4] - The forecast for 800G ZR/ZR+ optical modules has been raised for 2026-2027 due to a shift from onboard solutions to pluggable DWDM modules by major clients [4] Group 4: Emerging Market Needs - The expansion of AI clusters and the peak capacity of single data centers, along with power supply limitations, necessitate the distribution of GPU deployments, with latency being a key factor limiting the range of distributed AI clusters to within 20 kilometers [4] - Coherent-lite optical modules, categorized under the Ethernet market, are expected to effectively meet the emerging demands of this new market [4]